


The Lost Partner

by ChockyofSparta



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: AU, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, BecauseNoir, Femme Fatale, M/M, Old Friends, PTSD, Period-Typical Homophobia, Private Eye Bucky, Roaring Twenties, Shellshock, WWI flashbacks, tobacco, war buddies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 23:46:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7912201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChockyofSparta/pseuds/ChockyofSparta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes fought in the Great War, came back injured and disillusioned. He joined an agency sourcing secrets and blackmail, where one day an angry dame comes in with an ultimatum. His partner had stiffed her of her cash and failed to deliver her desire - her husband dead in the gutter. Bucky's obligation forces his hand to take up the case, it is revealed to be an old war time buddy. Conflicted by old memories that come back to haunt him, Bucky is forced to walk a delicate line between saving an old friend and dodging a looming storm by the name of Margaret Carter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lost Partner

I knew that she was trouble, just by the force of her high heeled shoes made as they clicked their way up the hallway outside my office. With trepidation, I sucked softly on my diminishing cigarette as the snap snap snap came towards me and refused to go passed as I’d hoped.

Instead, they came to a halt, sudden and sharp, like she’d planned the trip beforehand and had measured the length of each stride needed to get her from the top creaky step of the grimy staircase to the battered wood and cracked smoked glass that was my office door. 

I knew whoever she was, whatever she wanted, it couldn’t be good. At this hour, the office was mostly dark. Bars of orange light from the streetlight opposite the window filtered through the partially opened blinds which created blacker shadow rather than illuminated the place. 

I sighed in a cloud of bluish gray smoke and reached into my desk and pulled out what I hoped she wouldn’t notice was last week’s newspaper with its tell-tale fading ink and yellowing edges. I scooted my butt further back into the dying chair and hiked my legs up and placed my feet on the desk in front of me. 

My cigarette barely had the chance to glow brighter before she burst through the door without knocking. The fact that she didn’t even have to look around should have told me everything, but I wasn’t thinking much about anything anymore. It wasn’t because of her looks, because for sure, she was a pretty enough dame, well- presented in spite of the late hour and the thick misty rain that continued to fall outside. No, it was having a gun trained on you would do that to a man. 

For a moment, my mouth hung open, cigarette forgotten, and I felt completely out of my depth for the first time in a very long time. The determined set to her face, the furious glint in her eye and clenched jaw, all combined with the fact that she had her elbow tucked in nice and close to her body to absorb any of the recoil should she ever need to pull the trigger told me that this dame meant business. 

There was a bang, loud and sharp, and I flinched, my body moved to protect itself, make itself smaller, and for a moment, I thought it must have been bad because I hadn’t felt it. I hadn’t felt anything. 

But just as I thought this, the dame reached out with her hand, which held a small rectangular purse the same colour as her dress and flicked it behind the doorframe and tugged it. After some reluctance, the door swung around and she half turned and closed it behind her all without taking her eyes off mine. She ignored the new hole in the wall and marched over to me and my desk in the corner of the room, again in the measured strides she used outside in the hallway, snap snap snap. 

Before I had time to curse Adler and all that he stood for, she threw the purse down on the desk between us, reached out, snatched the dangling cigarette from where it had stuck to my bottom lip, dropped it into the saucer that was my favourite makeshift ashtray, flipped my hat off my head and smacked me across the cheek obviously as hard as she could make it, all in one smooth, practiced move. 

After the shock of thinking I’d been shot, this shock so close to the last meant that I couldn’t cover it. The dame packed a punch, I’d give her that for sure. I’d even been hit by a few guys who hadn’t had the amount of swing she’d mustered. 

My chair crashed back with me in it and the only thing that saved me from crashing right to the floor was because there was simply no room for it to go anywhere in the cramp, dingy little room. 

“Your partner promised me...” she stood over me and spoke to me in a hushed and angry whisper, the venom clear and scathing. “I’m short three hundred dollars and he promised me t-” The dame cut herself off and somehow managed to glare at me even harder. 

I started to make some kind of calming gesture, trying to get the cogs in my brain to work again and come up with some kind of excuse that would get her out of the office... or at least point that gun someplace else. So that explains Adler’s absence, and my heart sank. I just knew, at that moment, Alder had fucked up in some colossal way, again, and was at best, in some sleazy motel room somewhere sleeping it off after blowing this dame’s money, or at worse, lost in some ditch somewhere and not about to wake up for quite some time, if at all. 

Again I cursed his name and the day I met him under my breath and shook my head. I let go of the newspaper I forgot that I’d had in my hand, only realising now that it was mostly too dark to read it anyway. I moved forward, more of a slow twitch in the direction I wanted to go, then paused. She nodded, lowered the gun slightly and seemed a tad calmer now after her dramatic entrance had been both accomplished satisfactorily and appreciated. 

She sat in the chair opposite mine and rested her elbow of the hand that held the gun on the shabby desk, relaxed her grip ever so slightly and nodded. Begrudgingly amused, she watched me closely as I took my feet off the desk and tried my best to straighten myself up. I reluctantly pulled my tie higher, tugged my shirt down and even fastened up a button or two of my waistcoat that was a touch too small for me now that my muscle had started turning to fat because of all the office hours and hard liquor. In a last-ditched effort to be civil, I even scooped my long brown hair back off my forehead, but then had to resort to combing it with my fingers for it to stay. I knew I could do nothing for the five o’clock shadow that had not been near a razor for the last couple of days, nor the bags under my eyes that had appeared to have moved in when I hadn’t noticed and liked it there. Once vaguely decent, I sat up straighter, butt-slid my chair closer to the desk and to her. 

All this time, that little gun hadn’t wavered. I took a deep breath in and bit my teeth and surprised myself by sighing something very close to a yawn. Diplomatically I hid it as best I could, but I think she still caught it. This dame didn’t miss much. 

I coughed to clear my throat, and asked her as polite as polite could be... “Tea?” 

For the first time, she frowned slightly, but very quickly, it was gone before it could wrinkle that pretty brow of hers, so maybe I was projecting my nerves onto her. She looked around and saw two porcelain teacups along with matching saucers, both almost too dainty for a man’s giant hands. She looked from them to me like she wanted an explanation, but was too proud to ask. 

I reached towards them but had obviously moved too fast, because she stiffened again. I froze and held my hands up in a placating gesture and waited. 

“Ma’am?” I asked after nearly half a minute ticked by. I realised too late that I didn’t know how to finish it without sounding contrite. You need to trust me.... you came here looking for help, not the other way around...just change your mind and just fucking leave... Okay, maybe not the last one. 

Instead, I reached for the small bottle that was actually closer to her than it was to me, but slower this time. She let me but watched me all the way like a snake ready to strike at the slightest hint of danger. Fleetingly, I was tempted to go for the gun instead of the flask of back-road bourbon that was disguised as a bottle of Irish Moss cough syrup, but I didn’t want to have to explain to the old man upstairs that a dame had got the bead on me quicker and sent me on my way. As I poured the hooch, I watched the dame from the corner of my eye and I saw the moment the stench of alcohol hit her. Her right nostril flared slightly and her left eyebrow arched slightly, but surprisingly, she didn’t say a thing. In fact, I think that the gun even lowered slightly. 

The slosh of liquid was loud in the room; the rain must have temporarily let up for a bit. I pushed the cork back into the bottle with my left thumb and handed her the closest china that was now over half full of brown. She reached out and took the saucer from me like it was just another Tuesday afternoon high tea with her favourite lady friends. 

Maybe it was? She automatically placed the gun down on the table like I hoped she would so she was able to drink from the tiny cup without making a mess. She sipped from it politely and without hesitation. 

I smiled at her, and even though I wasn’t really at all surprised that the hooch hadn’t kicked her in the throat by now, I found that my charm was taking a bit more than usual force to summon. 

She grinned back, her white teeth a brilliant contrast to her dark red lipstick, and seemed genuinely amused. “My name is-” her voice barely affected by the burn of the cheap booze. 

I flinched, I knew once names were spoken that there was no going back. But then again, I knew that I’d never really had the chance to say no from the moment I heard the clack of her damned heels on the cursed tile outside. 

“-Margaret Rogers.” She looked away from me for the first time since entering the room and looked down at the gun on the desk in front of her. Still within easy reach. 

She turned her big, pretty eyes at me and smiled a killer smile. She said, “I want you to finish what your partner started,” then took another casual sip. The dame placed her cup onto her saucer then set them both down on the desk. She leant backwards away from me as if she hated the whole horrid mess she found herself in. “I want you to kill my husband.” 

***

I stared harshly at the dame across the table from me. I’ve found it best to be quiet, so they filled up the awkward silence with talk, but it didn’t work on her. I look her up and down slowly, not in a creep-sexual way, but more of a take-your-measure. She seemed to know the difference and just sat there and looked back, most likely doing the same. 

She adjusted in her seat, and I flinched again. I hated that this dame had gotten under my skin like this, in fact, not many people had. Maybe it was the booze? But did I need more of it or less? I shrugged to myself and looked down at the cup nestled in my hand. So dainty and innocent compared to the rough skin, I wanted to slap the blasted thing against the nearest hard surface, anything to get an edge over this gal. Instead, I gulped the hooch down in one go. 

In the brief time the edge of the cup blocked my vision, the dame had moved, crossed her legs at the knee, left over right, natural as you please. Her stockings were smoothed up, not around her ankles in the latest fashion, hair not in a bob, but tumbled to one side in slow lazy curls the colour of bitter coffee. Lipstick dark red, just the right amount of blush to hint at the natural beauty beneath them, dress jacket impeccably tailored, but not the latest fashion either. It was a bit hard to figure in the false orange light, but I would have placed money that it was a dark brown, a few shades darker than her hair. Clearly a dame that concentrated on style not flash. 

She just sat there, a small smile on her face and let herself be assessed. Looking into her big dark brown eyes, I realised then that I hated her. I hated this woman with an intensity that I left breathless by it. 

I broke the moment by looking down and putting the cup down on the corner of the desk. I was disturbed by this hatred, both by the intensity of it and the fact that I felt like I’d been insulted by her mere presence. I shook my head, trying to hide it. I cleared my throat because the last few vapours stabbed at the sides of it until I breathed a couple more times. I moved slowly and removed the cigarette case from my jacket breast pocket, clicked it open, the snap loud in the tense atmosphere and slid one of the remaining three out. I’d intended to make this batch last the rest of the week, but that was before she’d stepped into my life. There was always what was left of the last one, I studied it for a moment, the dame still visible through my lashes, but I realised that if I wanted it, it meant moving closer to her to get it, and I just didn’t feel ready for that yet. 

With hands that barely shook, I lit the ciggie with the lighter Adler had given me, dragged on the cigarette then placed at the corner of my mouth where it had stuck itself with a fleck of spit, the action familiar and comforting, I was finally sure that my voice would work again...and the dumbest thing ever to leave my lips fell out and I couldn’t for the life of me stop it. “Have we met?” 

She snorted the kind of sound that was meant to be read more as a surprise than insulting, but it still grated me anyway. She took her time to answer, looked at me closer again for a moment, then moved her head slightly to the left, “no?” She swallowed and her lip twitched like she wanted to smile but knew I had meant it as a genuine question. “I don’t think we have.” 

Everything about this dame was precise, measured. Dammit, this was my office, or at least half of it, my work, my desk, and at this time of night, my world, so how dare she come in like this and break it? I needed to get control back but I just wasn’t sure how and that made me nervous. I hoped, no prayed, that I hid it better than I felt like I was. “So,” I drew the word out as long as I dared. “What’d he do?” 

“Who?” Her brow furrowed, longer than just a moment this time, taken aback by the sullen almost disinterested tone. “My husband? He-”

“No,” I shook my head and cut her off. “Adler,” I clarified with a sneer. Even with one leg draped over the other, she straightened in her seat. “He,” she looked at my face, more like my cigarette like she wanted one but was too stubborn to ask. “He took my money and promised to k-” 

I held up my hand, more like a flick of my index finger and huffed out smoke hard enough to purposely carry across the cheap wooden desk and passed her face, but she didn’t flinch, just sat there and breathed it in. Definitely quitting on someone else’s behalf. 

“You do know what you asked him to do is against the law,” I asked her. “Right?” “What he does is against the law.” She stared at me that same unflinching way that made my jaw tighten. It was the same way I’d been stared at a thousand times by my dear old man, a mixture of disgust laced with stubborn and cruel disappointment. A thought flickered across her face and with it, her lips turned sour. “I’d do it myself if it wasn’t for what other people might think.” 

I stared at her, gobsmacked for a moment. My mouth worked, but I was at a loss at something to say until “o-others,” stuttered at a higher pitch that I hadn’t heard since puberty. I coughed to fix it, but the damage was done. She shook her head and rolled her eyes. Her leg slid off the other and moved to leave. 

“No, wait,” I reached out to stop her even though a moment before I couldn’t wait for her to do just that. She paused, perched at the edge of her seat, so I cleared my throat and continued. “I-I just meant that-” I swallowed smoke wrong and coughed. She waited, impatiently clearly warring with intrigue. I shook my head and smiled wryly when I could finally speak again, “Ma’am, if I ever piss you off, I can only hope that there are others around me, thinking.” 

She smiled in spite of herself and actually laughed. A fresh bark of sound, relaxed and a touch breathless. It also felt like the first true thing she’d done since entering the building. 

***

The dame clicked open the silver clasp of her purse and removed several photographs, the paper thick, and once maybe even highly treasured because only one or two showed signs of wear and tear. She handed them out to me, upside down, it was clear that she expected me to take them, but I didn’t. Her hand hovered, as steady as could be for half a minute or more before it lowered and she placed them on the desk between us. 

In spite of the amount of time this dame had spent in my office, I’d barely learnt any more about her case since she first walked in and I was reluctant to agree to anymore. This was Adler’s business, through and through, yet I here I was, stuck because this dame insisted that I complete a promise I hadn’t made. 

I stared down at the pale rectangles of paper and wished they’d burn a hole in the cheap wood they rested on. Burn the whole place to the ground, I urged, unsure if I wanted me and her to burn as well. I knew that as soon my fingers touched the first bit of paper that meant that I was taking the case, even before I saw the mug of the intended target. 

Instead, I looked at her and she back at me, I found that I was panting slightly. Feeling cornered, and before she could call me a slacker, I held my breath and reached out and flicked a fingernail of my right index finger underneath the bottom of the pile and turned the whole lot over. 

***

The few visible faces stared up at me, all upside down and each covered by the next picture. I swallowed hard on a dry throat and reluctantly pulled them closer. The dim light made it hard to see, but the guy in ’em produced the same eerie déjà vu that she’d had. 

A dawning sense of realisation grew in my stomach and my heart thudded hard a few times like it had tripped in the dark and scared itself then steadied back to normal. Both her and the same young man were younger in it, a photograph of an important gathering, snapped by someone really dismal at taking pictures. Tops of heads disappeared and the frame wasn’t straight, but it still caught the way the dame looked up at her man, her eyes bright and full of light and love that was clearly missing now in the older version who sat in front of me. 

All this apprehensiveness and my head still couldn’t figure it out until I got to the final picture in the pile. Suddenly the ghostly sensation of cold rough hands instead of smooth ones caressed over my shoulder and trailed their way lightly down my back. The sound of light stubble hissed over the top of a gasp of shortened breath. 

My breath hitched in my throat at the memory. I glanced at the teacup, but alas, it was empty, not even a hint of colour. Her lips tightened, maybe my reaction had been misconstrued, but I couldn’t think of how to clear it. 

I guess she felt the need for an explanation after all because she finally broke the silence. She pointed to the oldest picture “That’s my husband, he-” she broke off and I felt her studying me, but couldn’t look up from my hands. 

The guy in it for all the world looked like my old army buddy, little skinny Stevie, the guy that looked like he would snap in half during a strong sneeze. From one picture to the next, he grew to be, well...I felt the warmth run from my face as the shock set in and distantly tried not to let the intoxicating thought of again rough hands instead of smooth and huffs of breath visible during the most frigid of nights of my life and just how he’d saved my life show on my face. I swallowed dryly so hard it stuck, and I threw a glance upwards through my eyelashes to see if she’d caught it, but of course she had. That dame barely missed anything. 

***

She watched me closely, with her brow slightly furrowed and rouged lips tightened as she reined in to control whatever emotion that tried to flit across her face while she searched through her purse, and for a moment, I thought she was reaching for another gun. That this was it, I was done for, she’d changed her mind about not shooting me, but no, it turned out to be another group of pictures. She held them tighter than the other bundle and seemed to wait to judge my reaction. 

She straightened her arm slowly and held them out, her hand wavering, and for the first time, she showed the first hint of doubt. Trepidation quickly built as I broke my gaze from her challenging one and looked down at the pictures that fell into my hand that had reached out without my say-so. 

Again, they were rather amateurish, but somehow they felt not as bad as the first set. I stood up and made my way to the window, my aim to see truly see what had riled this dame up so much that she’d come all this way here at this time of night, but also to distance myself from her overwhelming presence. 

In the wash of orange light, I stared down at the incriminating bits of paper. I studied each one slowly then moved to the next, the drag of paper against paper loud in the small office. Steve, it was definitely Steve, just, not how I remembered him, all grown up now. There was nothing too raunchy. Truthfully, I expected worse, had seen, no, done worse in my line of work. They were just pictures, the only common factor was Steve and showed a progression of guys, the background seemed to be either a club or even a lush place somewhere. In the background, men and women danced as couples. Laughter forever captured by a flashbulb. The worst one was like she’d saved it for last. Just two men in the photo, Steve and someone that had their face turned like someone had called their name, just as the flash went off. Steve’s lips were swollen, both of their faces clearly flushed in spite of the grainy black and white film. It could have meant anything, but my breath caught anyway. Or nothing at all, except for the tilt of Steve’s head. I studied how it leant towards the mysterious man, Steve’s light hair close enough to catch on the man’s jacket. At how that casual arm was thrown over Steve’s shoulders was betrayed the man’s thumb brushed against the soft skin of Steve’s neck. 

Two thoughts hit me almost at the same time, both loud and clambered for attention. One, fuck, that could have been me in that picture, and damn-fuck, I was actually jealous of the little shit. Even more confusing, I wasn't sure which one was strongest. 

***

I’d reluctantly pumped as much information that I could out of the dame without resorting to throttling her, no matter how much I was tempted to each time she uttered different variations of, “but I’ve gone through all this with Adler, he wrote it down, shouldn’t he have filed it somewhere?”

Finally, I was able to escort her out the door with a hand placed firmly on her elbow. Perhaps a little too firmly by the way she’d flinched and sucked in her breath, but it was the only way I could think of to make sure she would leave. 

The click of her heels finally retreating told me that I had the office to myself. But the air had changed somehow. I turned and looked around the room, as I contemplated the change. The quiet now had an edge to it, and instead of catching a spare moment by myself like I’d thought before she’d arrived, I had been unwittingly glorifying in the absence of my missing partner. I felt horrible and I hated it. 

I gritted my teeth and cursed both her and Adler under my breath. I shook my head and sighed. It wasn’t her fault really, it was mine...I should have expected this in a roundabout-Murphy’s law kind of way, considering the line of work I was in and the company I’ve been keeping since the war. In a sick way, I was sort of relieved that it hadn’t happened before now and she’d gone elsewhere. After everything she’d told me, better me than anyone else, right? 

I sighed again and my shoulders dropped and I slumped over to Adler’s desk and sat on it mainly because it was the sturdiest thing in this office and could take my weight better than my own. I rubbed my face and refused to admit to even myself that this case had knocked the wind out of me. It didn’t make me feel much better, but it was something to do so I did it again. 

My eyes burned and I didn’t want to think about the thick soup of emotions either, so I growled instead. It was louder than I expected it to be. I flinched and stopped myself from doing it again by standing back up and turning and slamming my left fist against Adler’s desk as hard as I could. The pain was instant, but it was better than what churned inside, so I punched it harder this time. Everything on his desk jumped up, the slap of files and newspaper pages whispered as they slid to the floor, metal tinked against metal and a bullet rolled out of wherever it had rested before I’d disturbed it. I pulled my other arm back, and twisted my body so my whole weight was behind it, screwed my eyes shut and punched the wood one final time. I regretted it on the moment of impact and crumpled around the pain, my knees folded and I slumped down. I tucked my head backwards and away in time to stop my chin from smacking into the corner of the desk and fell in a heap on the floor. I felt the tickle one tear trickled out of my eye and down my right cheek, but I didn’t reach out to brush it away, instead I curled around the pain ball of pain at the end of my arm. I lay on the floor at the base of my missing partner’s desk and studied the darkened office from the unfamiliar vantage point. I didn’t cry exactly, instead, my eyelashes turned damp and I breathed strangely. 

“Damn it,” I whispered, the sound almost drowned out as the rain threw itself the window and the room dimmed even further. My breathing hitched again, but after a day of soaking up booze, the pain in my hands were a distant dull throb that sparked up only if I moved them. “Oh, Stevie,” I felt myself say rather than heard because of the tempest that threw itself against the rattling office windows. “What have we done?” 

***

Wednesday. It was Wednesday and everyone I knew hated Wednesday. I’d found that the worse always happened on a Wednesday...weighed down by the knowledge that it was the middle of the week and all of the mess that you’d put up with be it life, love, or work or a sick combination of all three, also loomed in front of you for the next few days. This Wednesday was also made worse by being the middle of the month and my destination was in the middle of the city. 

This one was especially difficult because of the weather. I hunched myself further against the blistering rain as the wind blew it sideways down the street in dedicated gusts. I seemed to be the only one brave or foolish enough to be out and face it. As I walked, trepidation curled up tighter and tighter in my stomach. Warily, I automatically searched the shadows and expected to catch the smallest tell-tale glint out of place that warned me that a monster that lurked in the depths of each stairwell or crouched in every doorway. I knew that I was not wanted here, because my honey trap skills had ensnared a lot from the within the small tight-knit circle before Adler promoted me to partner. 

Sure and quick in spite of the fact that I’d swore I’d never go back, my strides lengthened to cover more ground and ignored all except the worse of the puddles of water that slicked the uneven sidewalk, that were almost invisible in the dim streetlight. I’d recognised it straight away in the background of a few of the pictures that dame had shown me and because it was tied up with Steve’s case, I found my way further and further away from the safety of the main street and into an area that was even more dangerous than Jimmy’s fiefdom. 

***

If Jimmy’s speakeasy, The Calypso Bar, and his numerous other clubs were the sleek thoroughbred racehorses of the entertainment this city had to offer, then the Lady Luca was a single small, shaggy, overweight terrier with bad lungs and a gimpy leg.

Now normally I had the better sense not to compare horses to dogs, but I had it described to me like that once and it had stuck in my brain ever since. Still, the Lady tried her best, and maybe once could have been in the race, but now, passed her prime and with no rich patron willing to sink their name and invest their money in the place, it slowly became the place for those that were unwilling or unable make it amongst Jimmy’s crowd. 

Up ahead was the broken-down hotel for broken guests and the clientele loved the Lady for it. I stopped and slunk into the shadows of a doorway. The low crunching under my heel could have been glass, old leaves or something more gruesome, but it was too dark to see and too late to care. Well out of the circle of Jimmy’s jurisdiction, this place was more open to the police raids, the kind so bad their violence made the papers, an entertaining warning to the tender folk the perils of a sordid life. From my vantage point, I cased the place for a bit. No one seemed to be about, blown inside by the wind perhaps or shut up home not willing to endure the constant rain. One of my contacts warned me that another one was due soon, but I knew how to spot the start of one. It seemed even the fuzz hated Wednesdays too and were wiser than me by leaving the night alone. 

Sick of the cold that seeped through my wet clothing, I knew I’d run out of excuses to linger here in the doorway. It was either go and face it or turn and avoid it, not go in. And just because I’d made it all this way, don’t mean that it was guaranteed I’d make it back. It’s not that I expected Steve to be there, nothing in my life was ever as neat as that. But still, there was an extra knot deep in my stomach that I avoided analysing the reason for it. I dragged the brim of my hat down lower and flicked my collar up as high as the soggy material allowed, waited for the lone automobile to cruise passed and crossed the street in the darkness between streetlights. 

***

Inside was just as tatty and dishevelled as outside. Most of the remaining green paint in the ballroom had either flaked off completely or hung in thin streamers that fluttered softly in the old buildings many draughts. The creaky wooden floors were still the grimy bare boards, shoes popped on the grit and sawdust, and bits of glass broken from previous fights and never properly swept up.

On the separated area that counted as the Lady’s stage, a man sat with his back to everyone and slowly wrought a melancholy tune from the upright piano while his cigarette never twitched in the grip of his left hand. I continued on and headed towards what was once the check-in desk that had been shifted and doubled now as a bar. 

A few couples scattered the about the shadowy dancefloor and gallantly did their best to dance to the music that was too slow and depressing. To me, they just seemed to stand awkwardly in each other’s arms and sway slightly from foot to foot a bit. 

I leant against the bar and hitched my weight gingerly onto a stood beside it. I dropped my hat beside my right elbow so it would still be within reach and shrugged within my jacket, then realised there wasn’t much point in removing it because I was soaked through anyway. It was a good place to sit because in spite of the lack of light and smoke I was able to see most of the place and both exits. 

Three people were there before me, dotted purposely distant enough from each other that conversation might be carried out at polite volumes, but not close enough to one another to encourage it. In the dim light, it was hard to tell if they were men, women, or one dressed as the other, but that was part of the appeal of this place. Lost within their own thoughts, each contemplated their drink or a point of space lost in front of them. 

The young barkeep came up to me, his fresh face unknown to me, but I reasoned that it had been a while since I was here last...it felt like a lifetime ago. He must have been not that new because he smiled and nodded a greeting as he handed me a drink without me having to ask for it. I raised the glass and tilted my head in a silent toast to him and my neighbour. The smell of it hit me before I’d completed the action. I stared down at my hand, unsurprised but still displeased. Gin. I hated that hooch with a passion, because, for me, only badness was associated with it. Bad things that had happened to me, the bad things I had done, bad memories and bad black chunks of time I couldn’t remember, all thanks to this vile hooch, and mostly associated with this place as well. 

Unrecognised, I sat slumped over my drink, deep in thoughts of the past and haunted by ghosts for so long that I was almost insulted by it. As I waited, the music had finally moved on from dark and suicidal to something more upbeat and closer to cheerful. 

The barest hint of rosewater carried on a breeze was the only hint that I was no longer alone. “Well,” whispered breathlessly into my ear as a large manicured hand clasped my right shoulder. “I never,” they continued and they jerked me back hard enough that the poor stool wobbled in protest. The clenching of my left hand was my only sign of annoyance, but it was hidden by the fact it still held the glass. 

It was the owner of the joint, the original Lady Luca himself. Dressed to the nines in a flapper dress, the mint green silk almost completely hidden by an overwhelming amount of dark blue beaded fringe and a ratty white fur stole that had seen better days topped off the look. With lipstick on his teeth and his coiffured golden locks fading, the fur mirrored the wearer perfectly. 

Luca dug his long talons into my shoulder and pulled again, this time not so roughly. He rested his head against mine, the action almost affectionate. He caught the eye of the barkeep and shook his head at him and tsked at him. “This man,” Luca whispered angrily, his voice rumoured to be ruined in the great war in some circles and by more suspicious means by much nastier tongues. He shook his head again and finally let me go. “What do you think you’re doing wasting good hooch on a private dick like him?” 

The barman’s reaction was comical, his eyes widened and his face lost what little colour it and he reached out an arm before he swayed. I smirked sardonically into my glass and drained the remaining two-thirds of my drink in one swallow. I knew that previously I hated the taste, but now, it was a little sweeter by the ire I had created. 

I held out my empty glass and waved it back and forth a little. I smiled reassuring up at the kid, because, to me compared to Jimmy’s wrath, Luca was about as scary as a sulking puppy. “Hey, don’t worry about him, kiddo,” I said, the jovial tone caught even me off guard. “Luca’s still pissy that I looked better in a dress than he ever could.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that one of Luca’s leeches had sucked in a breath to be offended on his behalf. I untangled myself from the stool stood up and smoothly. The force of my action and the energy behind it changed his mind and when he saw that he didn’t quite measure up to the same height as me helped mightily too. 

I turned to the kid, “I can pay for that,” I offered reluctantly, a little louder than normal because the music had decided to get all loud and dramatic. 

Luca brushed a lock of hair over his shoulder and held up a hand. He narrowed his eyes and glared at me, however, he shook his head, “No,” he studied me closely. “No, you haven’t,” he muttered, “but you will.” He was threatening as a man could be who had a voice crackled into nothingness if he rose it louder than a firm whisper. As someone that dressed as a dame because they always had much more glamorous options. But this faded thing in front of me was no Jimmy, hell, he was barely even a shadow of the Luca I remembered. 

***

Alone with me in the room he had commandeered as his own, he shook the fur from his shoulders and let it fall to the floor with all the other detriments of outfits previously worn and abandoned on the same fashion. He kicked off his heels, one thudded against the wall rather alarmingly, while the other seemed to never land at all.

While Luca paced back and forth around the room like a beast in a cage, I leant against the wall and watched his silk stocking-covered feet stomped up and down, recklessly ignoring the threat of possible painful impact on the debris that covered the floor. I relished the fact that I knew that he literally couldn’t scream at me because of his damaged throat and how much it pissed him off. I also knew it best not to say anything and just let him work it off. 

After a while, I felt myself flick my hand like I flicked ash of a cigarette and the craving kicked back in. As discretely as I could, I half-heartedly patted my pockets for my case but knew that it would be empty even in if I did eventually find it. 

“So...” I flinched and looked up from my search. Luca flashed me a small sad wiry kind of smile that died almost instantly. He shrugged as he turned away from me. “At least that hasn’t changed.” He turned about then kicked his way through the closest pile of clothing until he had separated out what he was after. He bent down and rummaged in the pockets of the half inside-out jacket until he pulled out a pale golden cigarette case. He straightened and stepped towards me as he opened it, and offered the contents to me. 

I just looked at the case in his hand, then stared up at him without accepting the offer. 

Luca blinked and his expression twitched. he huffed a laugh as he looked around, and fought back a smile. “They’re not poisoned.” He pulled one out and placed it between his lips. “D’you think I’d keep something like that in my room?” he asked incredulously, as the smoke bounced up and down. “I haven’t seen you in a while, but I can get black-out drunk without you, so how stupid would I be if I had a pack of those within arms’ reach during one of those bouts?” 

I held his gaze, sucked in my bottom lip and waited. “Oh for-” Luca swore under his breath shook his head. “Fine, here.” And he waved me towards him. I reached out and lit the cigarette for him and he drew on it so savagely that it shortened visibly. Twin vents of smoke funnelled from his nostrils and he handed the burning cigarette to me. “Here.” 

As I studied him for any signs that either drugs or poison affected him, the smoke drifted up in lazy tendrils and hung in the air. After half a minute of no reaction, I reached out and accepted it. Still vaguely reluctant, I brought the smoke to my lips and relit it again. Luca patted a hand against his hair, a familiar gesture that I’d forgotten he did when he wanted to calm his anger, change the subject and or get things back under his control. He sighed again and went over to the low stool in front of the mirror and sat down. He appeared to be involved with his reflection in the mirror as he fixed his hair, but I remembered that he could see the whole room thanks the combined reflection of the three mirrors on the vanity. I stepped back until I leant against the wall and I shifted my weight to the right and was proven correct. 

“You know,” he paused his fiddling momentarily and studied my reflection. “I just don’t know if I should be flattered or angered.” He gazed at me over his shoulder and I gazed back as I smoked the cigarette to the end, our movements both familiar and automatic. 

He was talking about more than just the cigarette. I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could. “Both?” I offered, “Neither?” I looked down at the floor, the offending thing, anywhere else except in his direction, unable to meet his gaze. “It’s-” I sighed, the weight of our last argument heavy in the air between us. I didn’t want to admit to just how long I’d worried about being poisoned after I’d chosen Jimmy over Luca. 

“Y-you,” I cleared my throat and tried again. “You told me that I wouldn’t even know it and by the time I did, it would be too late.” 

Caught off guard, Luca’s breathing hitched and he blinked heavily a few times like he refused to acknowledge the tears. 

Without forethought, I pushed myself away from the wall and my feet found their way over to him. Apparently after everything, I still hated to see him sad. I gently placed a hand on his shoulder and after a moment I rested my forehead against the back of his head. He placed a hand over mine and I closed my eyes. I inhaled the scent of rosewater and lavender and a hint of spice that had always just been Luca. 

“Damn it, kid,” he breathed out so softly that I barely heard it and his whole body shuddered. “You could always make a gal’s heart aflutter.” I straightened up until my head lifted so I could see his reflection. His face was full of sadness, but the tears had dried. “I should have never let you go.” He spat the words out and bitter but heavy with regret. 

Our gazes locked within the reflection, “Are,” he asked, “are you here to kill me?” 

I paused and gave the thought serious contemplation. This close, it would be so simple. My mind raced over the reasons to do so stacked up higher than the reasons not to. I’d be so fast that it would be done and I’d have disappeared before anyone cared to notice. And someone with Luca’s reputation and in a place like this, it wasn’t likely that anyone would get on the blower to the fuzz. 

My head shook in spite of itself. “No,” I whispered as quietly as Luca had been. Luca gasped a breath in relief as I stepped away from him. A few golden strands of hair connected us, caught on my unshaven chin. I ignored the spluttering wet snorts that Luca made as he collected himself I reached up and smoothed them back into to place. I tucked each of my thumbs under his jawline and lifted his head back far until I could press my lips lightly against his forehead. 

“Now,” I let him go and moved away from him, scared by the emptiness inside of me that had so recently been filled with turmoil. I was doubtful he remembered after all this time how those small actions had mimicked his during the very first time we had met. However, the main difference tonight was the reversal of roles which gave me the upper hand. “I owe you nothing.” My quiet voice surprised me by how flat it was, but I didn’t let it show. 

“So what then?” Luca barked at me, his voice still rattled but he appeared to be desperately pulling himself together. 

The right corner of my mouth twitched, a quick smile but empty humour. “I’m looking for someone.” I pulled out the picture out of my pocket and handed it to him. “The fair-headed one is my business.” 

Luca turned the picture around and held it at arms’ length and squinted to see it better, too vain to admit the need for spectacles. It was the one that had been taken downstairs. He opened his mouth, and from the set of his face, I knew it was about to be some weak denial, so I shook my head. In the mirror, my face hardened and the expression said, don’t, just...don’t. 

Luca cleared his throat, “What’s he done?” his head was shaking before the words were completely out. “No,” he held up a hand and cut me off, “don’t tell me.” Instead, he held the picture out to me. “Poor sod,” Luca whispered. “What’s his name?” “Rogers,” I answered and took the picture back off him and tucked it pack into a pocket. I tried desperately hard not to give away how hard it was to say his name and it had been nearly ten years since I’d seen him last. “I’m not sure if he goes by that here, but I know him as Steve.” 

I sat down on the floor and for the next hour or so I polished off the rest of the cigarettes, while Luca told me everything he knew only stopping occasionally to note down a name or a place. 

***

After combining the rough schedule the wife had given me along with the information I’d gleaned from Luca it wasn’t really that hard to track Steve down. I just decided the night before that I would have to do it the next day.

I had repressed just how harsh and bright the summer sun was compared to the forgiving rain-slickened night. I slowly forced myself through the steps it took to turn myself from the scruffy, unkempt shambling monster into a clean-shaven and bleary-eyed automaton that the early starts and society anticipated. 

Throughout the motions of his bland day, I cursed Steve’s early-to-rise-early-to-bed mentality. The first thing on the list said that each morning he ran in the park a few blocks from his house because he preferred grass paths to the sidewalk. It wasn’t like I was going to copy him, Adler’s and his bad ways had seen to that. So instead I lurked on a park bench, pretended to read the newspaper and smoked too many cigarettes. The bench was a lucky find, it was at a discrete enough distance away where I could see most of the loop that he took without being obvious that was spying on anyone. 

Ever the gentleman, he took the time to be nice to everyone he met in a bland, polite way, no matter their gender or status, that matched the Steve I remembered from the war. He held doors open even if he didn’t need to go through them and smiled at children, or picked up hats that blew off in the warm early summer breezes and even ran a block after a guy who dropped his wallet as he got into a cab. 

What irked me, however, was that nowadays those small actions earned him more appreciative grins and more heartfelt gratitude than the skinner version ever did. It was like they thought he was being nice because he wanted to instead of having to like they did back when he took up less room. 

With the wallet successfully returned and huffed up with pride, he led me down the way to a small but busy diner that had cheap coffee and decent eggs, this morning, the waitress appeared slightly overwhelmed by his glowing face and breezy attitude but not by his wedding ring. 

Exactly twenty-five minutes the waitress left the food, he finished, folded his paper, got up from the same booth double-checked that the saucer was dry with his napkin, placed the teacup on the saucer, placed the whole lot on top the folded paper dropped the appropriate amount of change on the edge of the saucer, nodded to the cook as he headed to the door and answered the farewell the waitress offered with a polite smile and a cheerful wave. 

If it weren't for the pictures tucked away in the breast coat of my white shirt, and certain memories that like to broadside me lately at the most inopportune moments, I would have never have guessed that the man I tailed had a dark side to him. 

As I fell into place a discrete distance away, I found myself wondering about the dame’s three hundred dollars and if Adler had set the price or if she had offered it first and he’d automatically agreed. 

***

For the middle third of the day, I watched Steve from across the road at a convenient café’s table where I appeared to linger to enjoy the sun while I did my best to read a penny dreadful that I had found riveting until this case had literally hit me.

As best I could figure out, Steve was the lowly assistant in a three-man-team that in all probability only needed to be a one-man-team. Through the bank of windows, Steve pottered about inside completing fun tasks like dusting shelves and sweeping floors. To spice things up, I distracted myself as I created a mental list of possible ailments the unfortunately faded advertisement on the red brick wall of the place declared ‘- ailments? Siff’s & sons have it all!’ 

Even though no matter how amusing, childish, or daring that strain of thought wandered off and was overtaken by darker ones, the sort that clattered and circled round and round on an endless loop. Why was I so goddamn perplexed about this case? Where had the satisfaction of a job-well-done gone to? What previously-hidden loyalty popped up to chafe against the pride of one’s word finally became to mean something again? Was it the reluctance of being forced to off an old army buddy?... but then if it had instead been my CO early on during basic training, the man would have been delivered dead at her feet before she’d had the chance to finish the last syllable of his name... 

I shook my head, no, even though it was true. Somehow, that wasn't fully it. 

But the action pulled me back to the present and as I blinked about me, momentarily caught off-guard by the realisation that I was in fact in public were the night shadows weren’t around to cover slip-ups like this. I sifted in my seat uncomfortable by the thought that I was fast becoming one of those old geezers that sat alone because they talked to themselves.

I turned back to the book in my hands and made a show of reading it as I counted out every loathsome second for three minutes without absorbing a single word. After that, like a nag from a gate, my mind picked straight back up from where it left off...was it the fact that it was this army buddy?...The one I still had no idea how he’d somehow fished me out of that thrice-cursed river I was stupid enough to crash into in the dead of a French winter. the one who stopped us both from dying of cold the best way he knew how...was that why instead of doing what I normally did and just completed the task during a quiet moment of their schedule, I found myself slowly out with nature with the bugs and grew more and more sunburnt even though I had vowed and declared it would never happen again because I wasn’t ordered to stay there, dammit.... was that the reason, because the little shit had saved my life? Was no longer the little punk behind the burning knot in the pit of my stomach in which the coffee churned and seethed. And what the hell was with the sickening breathless anticipation that hung over me, the kind that was that was more than just the normal concern of being spotted by the mark. I sat there and cursed the moment, and everyone since that dame had appeared in my office, gun at the ready. 

I scratched mentally at the wound, it felt like I had been picked the edges of a scab off so much it already bled, so I might as well continue...And that spark of jealousy at the sight of Steve at the Lady Luca produced...what the hell was-

I cut the thought off before it could continue and found myself getting up to avoid thinking about it further. I folded the top right corner of the page of the paperback and pressed it closed, slipped the book away into a pocket of my jacket that I don’t remember removing, left a tip, slung the lot over my shoulder. For the first time in my life, I broke off a tail not because the mark became suspicious of me, but because I couldn’t handle the sight of the man anymore. 

It was uncanny how this muscular man looked enough like my old army buddy, Steve, and yet so different. The mannerisms and traits were all him, and yet, not him. Thinking about it made my head ache and my heart hurt. I should have seen it coming, but the ghosts of war flared around me like the start of a bad migraine. My heart felt like it galloped out of my chest challenged my lungs to a race. My hands shook as I fought to get myself back under control. 

The crack of an automobile door slamming shut ricocheted against the tall building surrounded me and I was lost before the echo died down. Blinded by gray fog that glowed with the flash of gunfire and shellfire, deafened by the stutter from guns and boom of larger artillery. The stench of blood, rot, mud and death so thick I could taste it, the jacket dropped abandoned by numb fingers, and so, overwhelmed, I fled. 

***

I came back to my senses well over two hours later and only a block or so from the office. I’d bolted across half the city without any conscious thought or decision. I didn’t care about the fact that I was drenched through with sweat, that my arms and legs felt had transformed into lead, and somewhere along the way I had lost my shoes. What sickened me the most was the thought of all those streets blundered along, all the intersections I had crossed unseen. 

Before the war, it had occasionally happened after I’d had a tough client at Jimmy’s or something went bad at the Calypso and I needed to get out of there for a night or so. But I had the war to thank for delivering such nightmare that washed those previous worries away like spit in a stream. 

Not slowing, I crossed my arms and hunched over. With an eye out for the hazards that my frayed socks couldn’t protect my feet from I did the best I could to hold myself together until I reached the privacy of the Adler’s small office bathroom where I coughed up acid then fainted. 

***

I cleaned myself up as best I could, then as the day faded, I sat in the office with my feet on top of my desk and smoked until my hands ceased shaking, my feet stopped throbbing, and my brain numbed with nicotine.

***

Eventually, my hands needed to do something more, so I found myself straightening things up, tidying even, something neither of us had done since Adler promoted me. I forced myself to be thorough with the files in front of me, I aligned the pages of each of them before I moved to the next folder, and slowly the pile of neatened files grew.

Damn it, Adler, I wondered, where the hell have you got to. Adler knew about my time in the army after one of the times I’d woken up from a nap in the office screaming my head off about the krauts and rather die than let the mud eat me anymore. I realised without rancour that I’d grown too reliant on the fat old fucker, the fact that I’d ended up here instead of home proved it. My shaky hands and still queasy stomach agreed. I needed him here, to calm me down, to talk me through it, to tell me what the hell to think and what to do about... and... but...The folder slowed through the air and didn’t make the filing cabinet before I let go as the implications what might have happened if that wish had been fulfilled. If he had been here, would I have known about the case? Would I have ever met his blasted wife and would I have had the chance to save Steve’s life? 

***

I couldn’t face Steve that night, or the next day, or anyone else for that matter. Instead, I hid away like a scared little ghosty-gal and haunted the office. I quickly ruined my previous tiding fit as I turned the office upside down until I found all of Adler’s little secret hidey-holes. I drank until I no longer felt the crushing weight of the case pressing upon me. Until the images of Adler casually shooting Steve as he walked passed him in the crowd faded. Until I stopped imagining Steve crumple to the ground and was replaced with the welcoming fog of unconsciousness. My head ached from overindulgence, my eyes red from too much smoke but the fact that the stubble on my chin had passed the itchy nuisance stage let me know that my bender had passed the several day mark. I sat in my chair, my feet up on the desk, and finally forced myself to confront the truth that I still loved the little shit and I was sorry that I had ever agreed to kill him.

***

I had two problems, one: Adler was out there somewhere. And two, I was as certain as socks were socks that the dame would be chomping at the bit about the lack of results and if I pushed my luck much further, just she’d up find someone else just as unerringly as she had when Adler let her down. 

***

According to the agenda, the first Friday of every month, the Rogers and several pairs of friends would have a night on the town, but a tame enough one, all things considered: a fancier dinner than normal, then to the movies, theatre, or dancing. It had been the one thing that the dame spoken wistfully about.

Disturbingly bitter, I sat and brooded in my automobile, aware enough that I knew I tapped my thumb against the steering wheel in an irritated yet distracted rhythm, while I gnawed the nail of the left away to nothing. But nevertheless, was too absorbed watching them as they all tumbled out onto the street and the cab pulled away to do anything about it. I had followed it all the way from the Rogers’ address and moved a few cars behind as it stopped along the route to the restaurant. 

Dressed as fancy as fine could be, Steve’s scarlet tie was a slash of blood down the front of his black silk shirt. He turned and revealed that the handkerchief in his left breast pocket matched the tie. There was a brief flash of matching suspenders when he reached up and straightened the collar of his jacket. His wife swanned about in full-length matching red silk. The gown was high and smooth at the front but flashed glimpses of smooth porcelain skin down the length of her back. She hung onto his arm and smiled at everything he said and appeared to have the time of her life, that shifty, two-faced, piece of work. 

She glanced around, perhaps to include her friends on the joke but instead she spotted my automobile amongst the line parked along the street and I saw her smile waver for a moment but only because I was looking for it as she seemed to recognise it. Her hand dropped from running over the waist of Steve’s jacket were a few specks of white lint still clung. She turned and stepped away from her husband in a way that appeared almost abashed. She frowned like was annoyed at herself and looked at Steve and then back at me. 

What the- I wondered and automatically flinched downwards like I meant to hide. I had thought up until now I had parked far enough away so that the spill of light didn’t fall on my face, but now I was unsure. 

I-did-wait-what...how did she know what I drove? I lowered my hand away from my face, just to see how she’d react. The dame immediately focused on the spot on the windscreen like she actually saw me and deliberately shook her head. 

Did that mean she changed her mind, or was it more of a ‘not here?’ And what kind of shitty amateur did she think I was if she thought I’d be stupid enough to pull something in front of so many witnesses? 

She reached up and fiddled with an earring. When her hand dropped, it appearing like she’d lost the thing. 

She looked over her shoulder, laughed at something one of the other dames said and dismissively waved her hand at them. She patted Steve on the arm, stretched up on tiptoe and whispered something in his ear that made him blush, then walked towards my automobile as she stared at the ground. At first, Steve hung back and waited while the others reluctantly moved into the movie theatre. The dame was a few cars away when Steve turned like someone called his name and headed into cinema foyer. 

My passenger door wrenched open and the whole automobile shifted as the dame dropped herself gracelessly down onto the seat, full to the brim with hell and spitfire. She drew in a deep breath to berate me, I could tell, but I cut her off before she could start and twisted in my seat, moving in that quick, dangerous way I had so I could reach across her with my left arm and pulled the door so hard it slammed shut. 

I stayed like that, twisted awkwardly, faces within kissing distance, right in her personal space. The pain was worth seeing her fire died down a smidge. 

Her nostrils flared with each breath, but so did mine. “What the fuck do you want?” I asked, not caring how I spoke in front of her. She pulled her head back, I figured more at the unwanted sensation of my breath on her face than the question, but our nearness still shook her. She was clearly a dame that was used to being in control. In fact, had probably planned the whole confrontation in her head as she walked over here and now was put out of joint that I hadn’t follow her script. 

Her voice shook as she asked me why. I ignored it, instead, I crowded into her even closer until there was the smallest of gaps between her cheek and my nose. “You asked-” I hissed so harshly at her that it hurt. I clenched my teeth and continued anyway. “You came to me, remember.” I shoved myself away from her because the angle had started to seriously hurt. 

I automatically clenched both hands on the steering wheel and stared out ahead of me but did nothing more as my anger dissipated. “Please,” she said frantically and cautiously placed a supplicating hand on my arm. “Just not n-” she cut herself off, but I figured out the rest and shook it off. “Now?” I supplied. “What’s so damn special about now anyway?” I asked and looked out the side window as I desperately wished that she’d stayed a harmless photograph within a distant memory of an old army buddy I had forced myself to forget about. I snorted a laugh, scornful and without mirth. “Is it his birthday or something?” 

She became so still beside me that it was like she was no longer there. As short and bitter as it had been, my laughter died. I waited, struck dumb for a moment and waited like I hoped that she would laugh it off or have another explanation, but when nothing came forth, I snorted a nervous laugh a couple of times as I waited for her to fill in the spaces. I shot a glance her way, before full turning towards her. She sat and stared down at her hands where they rested limply in her lap, the palms faced upwards, fingers clawed. Completely bewildered I turned away and looked out that the front of the cinema where her very alive husband had stood. It finally sunk in and anger flared hot in my gut. I let rip a string of curses as I glared at her. I couldn’t look at her anymore. “Damn you’re cold,” I growled softly and watched my hands as they crushed the steering wheel. I worked to get my breathing back under control. I had to calm down. I looked over my other shoulder and out into the night. Distantly, I wondered if from out there, it looked like we were in the middle of a lover’s spat, but I just couldn’t find it in myself to care. 

“You know, I thought-” I turned my head to face her, “I thought that I was cold,” I repeated, more of a confession to myself than to her. “I-I thought Jimmy was cold,” the fact that she blinked at the name and a single tear escaped down her cheek told me she knew the same one. “But we’ve nothing compared to you.” I cleared my throat and commanded her at normal volume, “get out.” 

She breathed in through her nose as she shook her head slightly and just like that, the tears had gone. The only trace was the faint trail of powder that had been removed. “No,” her voice shook, but she was adamant. She finally turned to look at me and I wished she hadn’t. “Not until you agree about tonight.” 

I stared at her, scared by her conviction. She misread me and disgust soured her pretty features. “Here,” she spat out. “Payment.” She threw something onto the passenger footwell. “It's real and so is this one.” With that, she tugged at her earlobe and tossed the earring so hard at me that I wondered if I hadn’t automatically snatched it from the air as it whizzed passed my face it may just well have had shattered the window if I’d missed. 

And finally, with a quick practiced flick of the wrist, she removed her necklace with hands that scarcely trembled. “And so are these.” She threw the string of pearls into the passenger’s footwell. 

She struggled for a moment on the latch to open the door, more of the car’s fault than her own. The dame just threw her weight onto the door and tumbled out of the car. She would have fallen onto the sidewalk if she hadn’t caught herself in time. “Stay away from us!” She hissed like a cat and arched her back as I helplessly watched her slam my door and then gathered herself as she turned away and strode back to the cinema and her currently living husband. 

***

I left not long after that and drove about the city as I tried to make sense of all that had transpired. I felt vaguely sickened by the idea that she had pegged me so quickly to being the kind of guy to extort more from the client in a time like this. I wondered bitterly if I would have I felt this way if it had been anyone other than Steve.

I stayed away but not just because she asked me too, but mainly this case wasn’t just another case for me. 

Damnit, this case. Steve...it hurt to just even think the name. The pearls winked up at me like tiny blind eyes from where they rode shotgun on the seat after I had pulled over and fished out her earrings from under my feet after a close call when they got stuck under one of the peddles. 

In the end, I didn’t have the fuel or the mindset needed to keep aimlessly driving and found myself outside an establishment that wasn’t one of Jimmy’s. Even though it had seen better days, it was nowhere as run down as the Lady Luca. 

I scooped up the jewellery because I had the vague notion of returning it and dumped it into the nearest pocket that didn’t already clink. I rescued my hat from the back seat and placed it on my head without the usual flare. I scrambled gracelessly out and had to shuffle a few steps to right my balance before I turned and slammed the door shut. I checked the street, then crossed it at an angle and entered the place with a level of confidence that hopefully was higher than I felt. 

***

I slumped down on the nearest barstool, and didn’t even care that it wasn’t the usual it-must-face-all-the-exits kind, and proceeded to polish off more than my fair share of the vilest gut-rot hooch I ever tasted...another fact that should really have been all the warning I needed to abandon the place was that not only was it gin, it appeared to be the only kind this place had on offer.

I was in full sulk mode and believed that I deserved everything that happened to me when I realised I had stopped tasting it at least an hour ago. Except that I must have offended the good luck fairy because after everything I had worked myself up over all this time became moot when it wasn’t me that found Steve, so much as he found me. 

He stood only a short distance from me, on the other side of the bar with his hands in his pockets of his trousers. He waited patiently for the line to lessen so he could order his own. I wasn’t too far gone to notice how his eyes scanned the room, and read everyone there like I normally did. Cowardly, I hunkered down slightly and only glanced at him through my lashes as I hoped that he wouldn’t see me. However, I somehow felt it when his blue eyes reached my face then moved on before he frowned and came back to me. I forced myself to focus on my glass like I was sad that it was emptier than it should be, and nothing else in the room. Then just like that, some idiot bellowed his name over the music and gave him grief about being too polite as always and pushed their way through the last few people to the bar. 

With Steve’s attention drawn back to mister loudmouth, I hoped it had been in time before his brain had clicked that it was someone he truly knew was here and that I was off the hook. 

Later I ordered another round and this one disappeared faster than my personal best. The next followed it just as quickly. The one after that, I waited for what I hoped was long enough for Steve and his buddies to find a seat, evaporate or just go away. I stood up to leave, but the vapours kicked me in the head and my legs folded funny. I shuffle-swayed sideways and felt someone jerk me upright by the arm. They pushed me against the bar so I wouldn’t fall over. 

Their faces swayed in front of mine and damn it... “S-Sarge?” He breathed out, shocked. Steve, it was definitely Steve’s hand that wrapped tightly around my elbow. 

Nope, I think I said aloud, or maybe it was the damn-it-to-hell, bit. Either way, his white teeth glowed in the broad smile that lit up his face. “Bucky, it is you.” He laughed, all perfect and unaffected as the floor rolled beneath us. 

“Fuck off, I’m fine,” I answered and shook him off, then realised too late that he hadn’t asked me if I was okay yet. “Now ask me if I’m okay,” I ordered him and swayed so badly that my face smacked into his chest and stayed there. It felt nice, but then it shouldn’t, because it was public and there were people, so I pushed him away, or maybe he helped me sit on a seat. Everything felt nice and distant until I actually embarrassed myself by letting rip the worst body jerking kind of a hiccup and burped quinine tainted acid. I coughed and swallowed. “Oops,” I said and actually giggled. I fought the drunkenness off as best I could, but the gin was too strong. I was still too close to Steve, close enough to feel the waves of concerned amusement roll off him as he watched his old army sergeant and trench buddy swoon in front of him, filled to the brim with the dreaded gin. 

I bellowed a curse as loud as I could and he bit back his grin long enough to admonish me, something about the attitude of officers, so I swore at him again, but this time my tongue stumbled more, so sadly, it wasn’t as loud. 

“Okay, that’s enough.” He knocked back the rest of his drink and placed his glass on the table. He stepped forwards and swept my right arm over his shoulders and stood up straight, which practically lifted me off the ground. He asked me something but I was distracted by how the words buzzed in his chest. 

I muttered another curse, my voice muffled because my face pressed against his shoulder. I hoped it was quiet and that it actually was an oath, but it confused me because it sounded way more like “God, you’re pretty.” My eyelids fluttered closed and my legs gave way entirely. 

***

I slowly became conscious of the amount of light around me appeared from an unfamiliar angle. Disoriented, I inhaled through my nose so hard it hurt at the same time my whole body jerked as I suddenly became fully awake.

I moved my head to look around and that was a mistake. The world swayed as a headache gave me a double-handed slap across both temples. Dizzy and sick, I rolled over and threw up in the basin that had perhaps been placed on the floor by the bed hopefully for that reason. 

***

Exhausted, I lay still even though it was rather uncomfortable with my right arm squashed under my body like that, but I couldn’t find the energy to figure out how to fix it.

The rest of the room slowly focused and came into view. Without turning my head, I saw the foot of the other twin bed on the other side of the low nightstand, its sheet and thin blanket rumpled. A door with two bare hooks nailed to the back of it was at the end of that bed, I moved my head as slowly as possible and more of the room came into view. I realised the room was small enough that the door would hit the bed when opened. I rolled over slowly, an inch at a time and saw that there was a matching door with hooks at the end of my bed too. 

My bed pressed hard up against the wall and the window took up most of it. It was covered by partially drawn pair of thin curtains that glowed pale blue and breathed softly back and forth in the early morning breeze. The bottoms of which were close enough to the bed that I felt it through the thin covers that I when they moved. They gave the whole room a soft blue tint, which made it seem cooler than it actually was. 

There was the smallest of movements from the other bed, a polite shifting of weight to let me know that I wasn’t alone. I lifted my head up, and there on the other bed was Steve. Whereas I was bleary-eyed and felt like death, he was already dressed, his shirt barely wrinkled and his sleeves rolled up. He sat there on the bed like he had been awake for hours, one leg tucked up under him and a hand furled casually around a cup of joe. 

“wait-you...” I pushed myself off the mattress with my left arm and blinked back at him “you were watching me sleep?” 

“I-” He looked down at the floor then back at me. “And here I was calling it sentry duty.” He smiled apologetically but the slightly blush gave him away. My arm decided now was a good time to shiver under me, so I flopped over completely onto my back and sighed. I didn’t know what feeling was stronger, embarrassment or oddly touched, so I ignored both and just stared at the ceiling. It took my brain too long to process what Steve had just said. “What-wait,” I glanced towards him but couldn’t see him. It suddenly took too much effort to turn my head, so I spoke to the ceiling. “you’ve watched me sleep this before?” 

“Yes,” Steve chuckled under his breath. “I have on the previous occasion made sure you didn’t choke in your sleep and die... And by the way-” my bed moved like he stretched out and kicked it. “Last time, gin was also involved.” 

I groaned, “gin is always involved.” This time, Steve laughed louder. My eyes turned gritty and the thick haze of sleep descended over me. Amused, Steve asked, “so who was he this time?” 

His question should have sparked me towards wakefulness, but it took too much effort to fight it off. I closed my eyes and spoke to the darkness. “I have no idea what you’re mumbling about,” but I knew my grin gave it away. “You know; the last time I saw you like this,” Steve teased, “there was this cute little French accountant that had caught your eye...” he trailed off like he was worried he’d said too much. “Nope.” I sleepily shook my head, my voice thick. “You’re wrong.” “Yeah?” Steve’s voice sounded closer and disappointed. I felt the blanket move as it was lifted up and placed over me. “Hmm-hmm,” I pushed my head back into the pillow because I had always hated the feel of the material against my face. I wiped a hand over the exposed side of my face and admitted to the pillow, “I caught his eye.” Steve laughed like he didn’t believe me. “Really?” He asked me softly, and the blanket twitched back. 

I hummed in agreement, the urge to sleep thickened and I just wanted him to be quiet and leave me alone. “So who is it now?” 

I was so close to sleep now that I had the briefest moment to pray that I was too far gone to answer, then I drifted deeper and felt nothing. 

***

Sometime later that morning, but wasn’t as stupidly early as before, I finally made it up. Guilted into facing the day by the fact that Steve had had the time to disappear and fetch more coffee and some dry toast for me and I hadn’t even heard him leave. I added some booze to my cup when he looked away, but the room was too small not to know, he was just too polite to mention it.

***

The sun flooded through the small window in the bathroom and with the curtains pulled completely open I had enough light to shave relatively safely. The kit the place offered was really basic but at least the razor was sharp. I wiped it a liberal dose of hooch beforehand though just in case.

I had my face covered in lather and completing my first stroke down the left side of my face when Steve stepped into view of the small mirror and leant against the door jamb and his arms folded behind his back. “I forgot you talked in your sleep.” 

I paused, blade mid-air and my stomach dropped. Oh fuck, please no, I thought but did my best from letting my reaction reach my face. As casually as I could, I flicked a glance at his reflection. “Yeah?” I broke eye contact first and wiped the razor load of suds against the sink as casually as I could. My mind raced back over the night. Nothing. I remembered the bar with the shitty gin I had poisoned myself at. However, I didn’t remember leaving or anything else since then. And I knew that just because I didn’t remember any dreams, didn’t mean that I didn’t have any. “Do you always try to get guys to talk while they shave?” I shot back and decided to concentrate on shaving instead. “Or,” I drew the razor down smoothly next to the previous stroke, the metal rasped loudly over my cheekbone in the quiet room, “am I special?” I studied Steve’s reflection closely, but either he was dead-set on not giving anything away or the mirror was too small to show it. 

“What did I say?” I asked as casually as I could to change the subject as my stomach churned, but at least my hands didn’t shake. 

“Little things, mostly.” His tone was light, and I frowned because it still felt like I was being interrogated. I flicked a glance to Steve again, there was tension in his shoulders and a set to his face that made me antsy. 

“Mostly?” I asked and wiped the razor again. I flipped the razor over and turned my head and started on the next cheek. 

“Yeah,” I saw Steve nod from the corner of my eye. “You yelled at your father not to eat all the puddings.” 

Surprised, I snorted a laugh but barely caught myself in time. I flung my head back and away before I cut myself. “Dammit, Steve,” I growled and shot him a dirty look over my shoulder. Annoyed, I wondered where the hell he was going with this. There must have been more because something as trivial as that didn’t match up with the tension that ran through him. How had the situation gone from ‘I’ll fetch you breakfast,’ to whatever this was? 

I sensed movement behind me, but all Steve had just pulled his arms from behind him and crossed them in front of him instead. 

Three-quarters finished, I decided it best to continue shaving, so I pulled the necessary faces to get the small patch on my upper lip. In between the three strokes needed I asked “any,”-stroke- “thing,”-stroke, - “else?”-stroke. 

Steve inhaled sharply behind me and nodded his head. “Yeah,” he admitted and his reflected face became even more still, more controlled so he didn’t show me anything. I bit my lower lip to get the last patch of soap underneath. “Yeah,” He cleared his throat, annoyed. 

With one eye on the job and the other on Rogers, I saw him fight a

gainst something. He finally spat it out like it tasted sour. “My wife’s name-”

No! My stomach dropped further and my heart sensed trouble and speed up to double-time. 

He continued like he didn’t notice. “-came up several times-” oh fuck. “but here’s the thing...” he pushed himself away from the wall and let his arms drop which freed his hands. “I never call her by her full name because she hates it.” He closed the distance between us in two strides. He breathed in deeply then held it like he was trying unsuccessfully to calm himself. It hissed out of him and he glared at me through the mirror. “I always called her ‘Peggy.’” 

My throat clicked as I swallowed hard suddenly reminded about just how much Steve scared me when he got like this, full to the brim with righteous anger when he was skinny kid, ninety pounds fully clothed and soaking wet.... so now – 

“And why the hell,” he hissed at me, almost under his breath, “do you have her string of pearls in your jacket pocket?” 

For the briefest instant, I played with the idea of getting offended that he’d gone through my stuff, but the spark in his eye let me know that I didn’t have the time. I let the razor fall from numb fingers and opened my mouth to calm him down as it clattered into the sink, but Steve didn’t want an explanation, he wanted to fight. He punched in the back, slightly over the right kidney. The force of it was so strong that I got shoved forward and bounced off the sink. 

I tried to turn and defend myself, but the room was too small and he just reached out and pinned my shoulder to the wall at arm’s length. I swung an elbow blindly back at him, but he easily dodged it and punched me again. I kicked out blindly and cracked my toe against his shin, but he was so mad that he scarcely registered. I had to stop fighting like it was the Private I remembered and fight the man he had become. He forced his hand passed me and I almost realised too late that he was after the razor. Before he could wrap his fingers around it, I stopped trying to turn and just thrust myself backwards into him and we tumbled out of the bathroom and onto the bedroom floor. 

Steve landed on his back flat on the floor, the wind mostly knocked out of him, but still that didn’t stop him as he pummelled me over and over again as best he could from such an awkward angle as I did my best to ward off the blows. 

I yelped breathlessly after one particularly sharp jab to the ribs, but, he still didn’t stop. I sucked in a deep breath and bellowed “Rogers!” in my old army voice. 

Somehow, through luck or fluke, I stayed top of him as he squirmed under me. “Calm the fuck down and tell me what’s wrong!” I flipped myself over so I faced him. “Talk to me, dammit.” I punched out at him but he pulled his head to the side and my hand crashed into the wooden floorboards instead. My hand was still close enough to his face that instead of drawing my arm back for another punch, like he clearly expected, I slapped him back-handed instead. The sting of it made my hand numb and left a red patch on his face, but it was enough to halt him for the moment. I rolled off him and crouched in the doorway, ready to escape but with my fists clenched ready this time if he continued to attack. 

Steve glared at me and the muscles in his jaw worked so hard that his teeth ground together, threw his upper body off the floor. I flinched and raised my fists slightly and shuffled back slightly, but he didn’t go any further. 

I watched him, both of us breathing slightly faster. His nostrils flared with each inhalation and it must have killed his stomach muscles the way he sat like that, but he didn’t put his arms down to brace himself or sit up properly. He roared with anger and launched himself at me. I dodged to the side and he missed me completely and crashed against the bathroom cabinet. 

He screamed and I thought he’d broken something, but he just scrambled around and launched himself at me again. 

I caught him and flung him over to the other bed. The whole thing shuddered and the springs protested loudly enough that I thought for a moment we were both going to go straight through, but it held and combined weight on the tired springs meant that we were too heavy to bounce much. 

It quickly became clear that he wasn’t as practised in fighting in such close quarters as I was, because he swung his elbows too wide each time, so he ended banging them on either the wall or the nightstand which affected the strength of his blows. Finally sick fielding the worst of his wild blows or getting hit, I grabbed his forearms and pushed them together and raised them above his head. 

He lost it completely and pitched a fit. He threw his body from side to side so rapidly that I struggled to keep my grip on his arms and my weight on his upper body so he couldn’t shake himself free. I quickly shuffled myself about until I could hook my legs up and placed both my feet between his legs and shifted most of my weight to my lower half so his thighs were trapped and pinned his legs to the bed. “Rogers!” I barked, louder than I had before in my life, louder than even during the war. “Stop it!” 

In spite of the fact that it had been years since I’d been his commanding officer, he still reacted instinctively and froze. 

Out of breath, I flicked my hair out of my eye and stared down at him. He was still wound as tight as a coil, but damn it and damn him, I was going to sit on him until he tapped out. 

He realised what I wanted him to do, and he lifted up his head and let it fall against the bedframe with a crack that must have hurt. He gritted his teeth and shook his head and spat out a “no.” I didn’t reply, instead, I turned my feet out and dug my toes even more painfully into the meat of his thighs. 

He flinched in pain, but I stubbornly refused to let up until he did first. He glared up at me and I watched as the guarded look in his eye slowly faded as his breathing recovered and he fought off the memory of whatever had caused the panic down. 

“S-Some-someone,” Steve’s voice sounded like it used to when he was small and thin. It caught me off guard and Steve used the chance to escape. It turned out to be a mistake to let him go, and I half-knew it as he freed his hands. No matter how reluctant I was, I still shifted my weight until I sat on the bed instead of him. I kept my back to the wall, the smooth surface nice and cool against the bruises I only just started to feel. 

He growled, annoyed that his body could still betray him after all this time. He sat up, which further increased the distance between us. “Someone’s blackmailing my wife,” His voice back to normal, he refused to look at me. “And I know that someone is you.” 

“Me?” I asked, still slightly puffed and glared back at him. “Steve-just...” Even though there was nothing humorous about the situation, I felt myself smile anyway. 

He sprung up off the bed. I flinched, my hands curled into fists and I pressed myself into the wall and regretted my decision to back myself into a corner like this, but instead of attacking me, he moved away to the bathroom. He dropped out of sight for a moment, then came back his black jacket in his hand. He shook it out until it unfolded and a tangled bundle of pearls fell out and landed on my bed. He sat down slowly on the old bed and let it absorb his weight slowly so the pearls wouldn’t shift on the mattress and tumble underneath him when he sat down completely on the old bed. The patch of sunlight splashed over his legs and into his lap where he placed the white pearls contrasted starkly against the dark fabric. 

He sighed and stared down at them and his face softened ever so slightly. I knew I wasn’t supposed to see it, so I stayed quiet. After the longest time, he spoke without looking at me, it was like his calm would shatter if did. “I know that these are hers,” he reached out and slowly removed an earring from the pile. He turned it around so it caught the light better. “My mother gave her these as an engagement present.” He placed it carefully on the nightstand, then extracted the other one with the same care the first had received. He spoke down to his fingers as he untangled the necklace one strand at a time. “This was a wedding present that has been handed down through my family from mother of the groom to the bride of the eldest son for generations,” he quietened while he untwisted a particularly uncooperative knot, then, “the only stipulation is that just before it’s passed along, a new string is to be added.” I stared at the mess to me seemed impossible to sort back into anything other than a ball. It only then truly dawned on me just how angry his wife must have been to throw away something so treasured. 

Steve’s fingers found a rhythm and it was like he didn’t need to look at what he was doing anymore. “This thread here is the trickiest because it’s also the newest.” the tip of his tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth. He tilted his hands down and the pearls ran down his wrists and into the air. He grasped each end marked by the silver clasp and with a flourish, he pulled his hands and all too soon it was finished, the mess had resolved itself into a necklace again. His anger had never truly left, he had bottled it up deep inside until he appeared calm. He searched the bathroom cabinet and under tha basin until he found a hand towel. He rolled the fabric up tightly, wrapped the necklace around it and closed the clasps to lock it in place. 

***

The urgent need to fix the heirloom had finally left him and in its place surged anger.

He said he knew. Steve glared so hard at me, so filled with hatred and righteous anger that I found it hard to breath. My chest was crushed, my heart broken. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He thought he knew and he hated me for that, so what would he do when I told him the truth? He swallowed hard and blinked away the tears that clung stubbornly to his lashes. 

I somehow breathed in and it felt like I sucked in slivers of glass instead of air. I breathed out then in again. I wanted to reach out to Steve and wipe the tears away more than I had wanted anything in the world before. But somewhere along the way, I had lost the last piece of him that I didn’t really until it had gone had been mine. He thought that he knew my reputation...he thought that I was capable of blackmailing his wife. 

Heartsick, I sighed and swung my legs over the bed and rest my elbows on my knees. I couldn’t look at him. Since I had lost him on the that tiny sliver of my fractured life, I decided that I might as well tell him everything. I shook my head ever so slightly. “No,” I chided gently, “You don’t.” 

He barked a laugh, and I saw him huddle even further away from me. The smallest part of me clung to the fact that he hadn’t left the room, hadn’t left me. 

He was about to start talking but I cut him off. If I didn’t start now, it would never be said. And if I never said it then there was no chance that Steve would ever forgive me. “I-” I stopped and swallowed hard. I fished out the flask from my pocket and spun the lid off with a practiced twist of the thumb. I swigged enough from it that the liquor completely filled my mouth. I held it there because I wanted to feel something, anything except the waves of lethargy that felt so heavy they would crush me. I slowly closed the flask and placed it on the nightstand. I’m a fucking coward, I thought, I wondered, where to start? So I picked a point that had seemed to hurt Steve the most. “I’ve never blackmailed a dame in my life.” 

Steve made an angry sound like he wanted to interject, but I didn’t let him. I glared at him, the first time I’d look his way in a while so the emphasis worked. “No women or children,” I recited the mantra that I had drummed into him over and over during the war. “Remember?” I asked, but meant, how could you forget. It was the last thing that I had stuck to, the one thing that I refused to do. 

I studied him through the tumble of brown hair in the way. He didn’t look convinced yet, but at least he appeared more ready to listen now than he had been. 

I had to stop looking at him, because I found his pretty face so distracting, I always had. Instead I folded myself up further and looked at my hands, the wall, the floor, anything and everything except directly to him. “I have something I need to say, something you need to hear.” I swallowed hard, caught out by how thick my voice sounded. “And if I start, I need to finish.” I took a deep breath. “So here goes...the truth is I’m not blackmailing your wife, but I understand why you might think that.” I continued through the shaky sobs otherwise I knew that I’d never move passed them. “It might be an explanation for the erratic behaviour you’ve witnessed during the last month or so...I-” 

I rushed the next bit and had to hope he understood. “Instead of me blackmailing her, sh-she hired me to kill you.” As I continued telling my hands how Margaret Roger had stormed into my office, my tears slowly stopped, I had gone the passed the point of overwhelmed by emotion that I just stopped registering it. My story may have waved back and forth as I added and changed the story as I remembered bits, but I left nothing out. 

I talked and talked somehow without thinking too closely about what I said. I just kept confessing. Everything and things that I hadn’t realised I needed to say. I told him about working for Jimmy and how I’d hated it. I described all the horrible things I had done to me. 

I continued passed Steve’s occasional muffled sobs that slowly increased words kept wanted to be said. Because if I stopped, it would never be said and I would never be free. 

I told him about how I’d shown them both that I had the spunk to know I was worth so much more than a pretty face for the honey trap that Adler and Jimmy set up between them and how I shouldn’t have had to kill someone to prove it, but I did and I had. But it was worth the step up in the food chain and I never regretted doing it. I how I regretted how I bewitched by the idea of Luca and Jimmy squabbling amongst themselves that I chose sides without realising that I had been playing with real people and real emotions. 

Peripherally, I was aware of the sunlight that moved about the room. At one point, I sat back with my eyes still closed, and vaguely enjoyed the warmth across my face. I talked until my whispering was too loud and the room turned dark. 

I skipped back to even before the war, when I was still a kid. How scared I was because I had nowhere to go because my old man had kicked me out of home at fourteen because he’d caught me with the boy down the hall. I explained how my father had walked in on us when I didn’t realise he was home early for day, and all we were doing was laying on the marble tile hearth with our shirts tucked up because it felt like it was the coldest place in the hell-heated city. The kid had rested his head on my stomach because it felt funny as we talked about the random shit that age. My father must have followed the voices and just lost it when he saw us. and picked both of us and dragged us both down the hallway. How he had yelled things that at the time I was too naïve to understand. However, after a few weeks with Jimmy and his crew, I leant all of it and then some. I told him how great Jimmy had seemed because he took me up under his wing and showed me how great the world could be until he had me well and truly hooked. 

I had found this hushed fog protected me from everything and as became more involved with searching my memory for something else to tell him, everything else in the room became less significant, even Steve. I talked until my voice ran out and my throat hurt but I still had things to say. I explained what it was like for me during the war and how much I hated killing calmness decended during battle and how they still haunted me even after all these years...how Jimmy had been impressed by them and had exploited and even encouraged them. I explained how I desperately refused to be another of those ridiculed groping officers who abused their powers and that’s why I pushed him away, and the biggest regret of my life was not staying with him in Paris after the war ended. That I put my reputation first which at the time had been so precious to me rather than my own happiness. 

I spoke of all these things and more, as each and everything was named, the poison inside my heart slowly eased and I felt lighter than I had ever been before. 

***

The room was as dark as it would get by the time I just had to stop. The blue curtains had been pulled closed again at some stage and the glow was now the palest of pastel oranges so dim that there was only the window was illuminated. It was so quiet that I almost succeeded in convincing myself that Steve had left me hours ago and had I become so absorbed in myself that hadn’t notice him leave, when I heard a sound. It sounded like the kind one would make if they held their breath as they tried stop themselves from breaking down into sobs and not succeeding.

With my hand out, I moved slowly in the dark toward him. My fingertips brushed against him sooner than I expected. I clung to his shirt and pulled him towards me as I sunk back down on the bed. The springs protested again, but I barely heard the sounds, I was so focused on the quietly sobbing man in my arms. 

It was different to how it had been when he’d been smaller, but I’d also changed too. After some slightly awkward shuffling around, we found a new way to fit. Finally no words would come, so I held him tightly as his breathing changed from thick and ragged and swelled to full blown sobs that wracked his whole body. There was nothing to say, of course I was upset, I hadn’t completely lost my empathy to the fog and become a monster. but I was drained, so we lay tangled there on the single bed that was a bit too small for one man, so was tiny for two while Steve held on to me like he would never let go and cried for me instead. 

***

Sometime in the night, Steve eventually cried himself out and we both drifted off to sleep. During a bad patch where it picked up again, I recalled how Steve had found it soothing when I drew circles on his back lightly with a finger, so I rucked up his shirt tails enough to slip a hand in underneath. The good thing was the familiar action also soothed me as well and we soon fell into much needed sleep.

***

The curtains were barely a silvery gold and because it was as cool as it was going to get I figured it was around dawn. I became aware of an ache in my bladder which let me know it would be a problem soon, but for now it was safe to ignore.

I wasn’t used to being awake at this stupidly early hour or being in someone else’s company. I planned to tease Steve about how all this good air and morning sunshine nonsense affected my nocturnal rhythms and the second one depended on how the day progressed. Wide awake and slightly bored, I breathed out a cross between a sigh and a yawn. I looked around, then became vaguely intrigued if I could see out the window without disturbing the sleeping man who curled up on top of me. I reached my left arm out and twitched at the curtains, I lifted my head off the pillow, then I let them the curtain fall back without a glimpse of sky because Steve twitched in his sleep. I shuffled him across my body and down slightly so his shoulder fitted better under my right arm which freed it up enough so I was able to move it around a bit. I slowly opened and closed my hand a few times and enjoyed the sensation as the blood flowed back into it. 

***

I felt at peace for the first time in so long that I couldn’t remember the last time. I had been awake long enough to notice the changes the rising sun made as the morning crept onwards. I tried to make the cigarette as long as possible because I didn’t want to disturb Steve any further than I already had. I knew that if I wished the moment would last forever I would jinx it, so I enjoyed it as fully as I could.

Even though for so long now that my fingertips had numbed slight, I continued running my fingertips up and down the small of his back where his shirt had exposed. I found the soothing motion and kept me focused in the moment when my mind tried to drift into the more unpleasant memories. 

I had only a couple draws of my cigarette left and turned to the serious contemplation of just rolling off the bed, Steve and his precious sleep be damned, when a hand clasped around mine and halted its path. “I’m not sure if I want you to stop that or keep going,” Steve’s voice was thick, but wasn’t as sleepy as I had expected it should be. Had the little shit been playing possum? I felt myself smiling even though he couldn’t see it. “Neither do I,” I admitted, then reluctantly pulled my hand free. “However, seeing as you’re awake, you need to move.” 

Instead of obliging me like I expected, his whole body stiffened “No,” he said, petulant and pulled me closer and hugged tighter. “Why?” 

“Because my foot’s asleep, you big lug,” I shot back, “And I’ve been needing to pee for the last hour.” 

The punk smooshed his head back into the pillow and muttered a challenging, “so?” 

I didn’t answer, I jabbed him in the ribs. Steve yelped out a startled, “fuck!” flinched away from me like I’d planned. I used the moment he flinched to slither free from his clutches. It turned out that my foot had indeed fallen asleep, but I only found that out as I put my full weight on it and just about collapsed on the ground. 

“Ha, take that!” Steve laughed at me, completely unsympathetic. “Karma’s a bitch.” 

The urgency ramped up a few notches as I tried to shake the feeling back into it. I hobbled as best I could towards the bathroom. I growled at him without looking at him, “you kiss your mother with that mouth?” 

Steve sat up on the bed too quickly and the springs shrieked in protest. “Nope,” he said and sounded pleased with himself. “But I’ve kissed you and you didn’t seem to mind.” 

I paused opening the door and glanced at him. My heart quickened at the sight of his smile widening into a cocky grin. He gracefully tucked up legs under him and started to bounce up and down lightly enough the bed didn’t complain. 

“Punk.” I shook my head and continued my mission. “Jerk!” Steve called back. I pulled the door to but not completely closed because that made the room too small. 

I’d barely started when the door opened. Whatever smartass comment steve had planned disappeared when proved I was able to reach out slam the door in his face without stepping away from the bowl. Startled, I barked his name out like I was still his sarge and it was the best swearword I had ever heard. I was annoyed enough to say with it. “What are my rules?” I repeated myself so he could hear me. “Say it with me, one!” I counted off and I mouthed the words as he filled the silence with volume he had never managed to achieve in the army because of his small size. “One, is the true root of evil.” 

I smiled pleased that it had stuck even after all this time, but kept the smile from my voice as I bellowed. “Two!” 

There was barely a pause before I heard, “Two, no woman or children!” “And three!” 

“Three,” he replied, “No talking to a man while he’s peeing, ya lunatic.”  
I finished like I had back then too: “So heed it, Rogers!” I yelled back. Steve’s hooting laughter floated through the door and just about covered what sounded like applause.

Grinning, I fininshed and threw the cigarette into the bowl then pulled the flush chain. I glanced in the mirror and idly at the reflection rather down at the basin until I finished washing my hands. My smile died and I froze. There at the bottom was an partially folded straight blade razor. I had a flash of confusion that lasted until I saw and felt Steve’s attempts to grab it. Had it really only been yesterday? My flimsy happiness shattered under the weight. I fumbled opening the door and back in the bedroom. Steve crookedly lay on his bed, his feet dangled over the edge and bounced up and down, the only sign of restlessness. He had clearly cooked something up and had waited impatiently for me to come back and notice. 

Disregarding my own safety, I slumpled down on the middle of the other bed instead of the space where he patted next to him. Of course he had noticed the change, but as yet was still absorbed in his scheme to fully comprehend just how far things had spun for me. “Oh, jus - come on!” He complained “you-” he cut himself off when he finally caught sight of the razor in my hand, and watched silently as I flicked it closed with my thumb. 

“She’ll never stop,” I stated quietly and I knew without looking that didn’t have to clarify who. “Ever.” It had been nice while it lasted, I thought as slumped against the wall and stared at him across the room. 

Steve shook his head, but it lacked conviction. 

“There is a saying, that goes,” I told him as gently as I could, “Once bitten, twice shy.” I mentally waved the memory of her in my office as it flashed in front of my eyes, the steadiness of her hand and the determined set to her face. “And once with her was Adler, twice was me...” I stared at the invisble gulf the rest of the world insisted on placing between us. My voice dropped further, heavy with the implications. “And there will be no chance at a third.”

Steve shivered. “I know.” 

I threw myself forwards and up off the bed like I planned on pacing around the small room, but I had to sit back down quick as the room spun about me and sharp, crazy dots of impossible colours swam in the corners of my vision. I panted like I had run a race, “please ,no,” I whispered, my head close to my knees and squeezed my eyes shut. “no, please.” I begged. “I can’t.” I whispered and soon as I said it I knew it was true. “I-I-” I stopped because my voice cut off.

Steve cupped my face in his hand. “It’s okay.” He shushed me and pulled my head gently against his. “We’ll think of something else.” “No, it's not.” I replied as the first tears fell from my eyes. “And there’s nothing else,” I sniffed, and wiped my face angerly against my forearm. “And I can’t.” “Shh,” Steve pulled me closer. “Don’t shush me.” I shoved him away, but he held me so tightly that we both just swayed instead. He ignored me and he wrapped his arms around my head and blocked out the world. “You’ll see.” “No woman or children,” I reminded him, in case he had somehow forgot my code. My breathing hitched as I bit back another sob. Steve rubbed his tumb across the nape of my neck, trying to soothe me. “Please,” I whispered, “I just can’t.” My breath rate increased towards the start of a panic attack. “Don’t worry.” Steve murmed quietly. “Not again,” I confessed. “So we’ll find else something,” ever the optimist. He nudged me with his knee. “I’ve got one...” and he tailed off. 

I had to ask, “yeah?” Steve huffed a laugh, and said “‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” I laghed in spite of myself and I pushed him away indignantly. “You’re no help,” I scolded. 

“Well, you’re no longer crying, are you?” It might have been true, but I thumped him anyway. He flinched and slumped to the floor to get out of my reach, his laughter reluctant and bitter as mine. “Fine,” he stated, his voice loaded with the kind of determination that had fetched him into lots of trouble in the past. “I’ll make some calls,” 

***

Because, I called everything in. I was ashamed to admit that I played up to Luca’s vanity and Jimmy’s pride to get it done, but if things went smoothly, I was sure that they would forgive the white lies in time. If not, I would be far enough away that ‘out of sight – out of mind,’ truly fit. Both phone calls, I made my voice breathy and rushed. And I wasn’t dumb enough to just ask for best of everything, times two. I was well aware that you never truly knew if anyone else listened. Instead I had used the code words and euphemisms that had been agreed on a lifetime ago. The each wished me luck in their own way, but I was surprised that it was Jimmy that came across as most upset by my imminent departure.

Within an hour of hanging up the phone, I had all the travel paraphernalia required to get the two of us from here to Argentina. 

***

That night the wild wind howled and complained as it blasted against the automobile, searching for any weak points . The vehicle rocked with each gust as we sat in the dark, side by side, not talking both of us stared out straight ahead, but didn’t see the night, rather the past that we wanted to leave behind, at least, I was anyway.

I glanced out of the corner of my eye. In the dim light that washed over the vehicle from the train station, Steve was hard to make out. The light caught on small shifting patches, and glowed in his hair. It didn’t help me by landing on his face, so I couldn’t see his expression. But he seemed as nervous as me. The tension in the set of his shoulders and his clenched hands worried me. I wondered if he already regret his decision? Out of both of us, he had the most to leave behind, after all..the most to lose. I smoked the cigarette as slowly as possible, savouring the taste and tried my best to make it last. I was committed to this enterprise. I’d done it before, gone off, changed my whole direction of life, become a different person, but it had always been by myself before and under my own terms. Never like this. 

Nervous that he’d get out and change his mind if I said the wrong thing, I was couldn’t think of anything of import to say. Any attempt at small talk had died a quick death by his monosyllabic answers and stern nods or occasional shake of the head. No, doesn’t want a smoke, or a drink or need to go back and get anything. Got his new passport and his new papers and patted his breast pocket to prove it. 

The train we waited for was due in just under an hour, the tick of his open pocket watch placed on the dash where we could both see it became loud when the wind finally blew itself out. 

***

I carried the battered suitcase with the false bottom in it, crammed full of the money that Adler owed me and no more. In spite of all the things I had been called in the past, all the things I had done and been, a thief was not one of them. Steve had also packed light. I’d warned him that we needed to travel light enough for a couple of weeks, otherwise it might rouse suspicion. Besides, we could get anything we needed cheaper once we got underway and we wouldn’t have to pay for the freight costs.

Steve had asked me why Argentina. I figured it was warm and as far away from France as one could get without falling off the planet. And if we didn’t like it, we would have the freedom to keep travelling until we found somewhere that we did. 

We sat in the dark, slightly overwhelmed by the knowledge that the sooner we got out, the sooner the new life would start, so we waited, neither of us making the first move. Waiting, an unpleasant tightness in the throat and a queasiness in the gut that spun itself tighter with each tick from the watch. 

By forty-five minutes left, the constant tick was got inside my head, irritated my nerves. I sucked in a deeper breath sighed. We both shifted our weight at once and huffed out a nervous breath of laughter. I looked at Steve, studied him. Whatever he saw in my face made his resolve hardened, he clamped a hand over my right knee and squeezed it, his palm warm through my summer weight trousers. I wanted to kiss him, but even this late at night, I knew that getting caught would be so stupid now. Steve smiled like he knew what I was thinking, a type of smile that lasted longer than the others had and nodded. 

I nodded back and we both reached out and opened our own door at the same time. 

***

On the platform, the tickets in our pockets and our bags about to be loaded onto the train, we still had over half an hour to fill before the scheduled departure and had just been told that the train would be late due to a tree that had been blown down further up the line from us. I realised then with a bitter smile that if I’d chosen the other station, that the problem would have been sorted out faster, but no, I had chosen the bigger, yet less busy one in case someone had managed to slip through my net and follow us.

The station master wandered away from us and seemed to potter about trying to appear busy, the bowl of his pipe glowed with every breath and puffed out white clouds of smoke that hung over his head in the thick summer air. 

I felt a tug on the back of my jacket and turned around. “Excuse me, sir,” it was a small boy, the front two teeth missing and with his hair askew made him appear even younger than he probably was. “you’ve a telephone call in the office.” 

I looked up and around, startled. I had booked the tickets under an alias that even Adler didn’t know and had told no one of our plans, so how had they known I was here? I glanced at Steve, but he seemed only confused, maybe he didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation. 

“Me?” I asked and hoped my reaction sounded like mild curiosity rather than stomach-skittering panic. “Are you sure.” 

The kid nodded, then pointed with his left arm inside. “It’s in the office, sir.” The kid looked up at me, his face seemed friendly enough, no hint of malice there, but I had learned the hard way not to trust children, no matter how innocent they appeared. He smiled sweetly up at me and offered, “I can show you if you’d like.”  
“N-No,” I shook my head, “I’m sure I’ll find it, thank you.” The kid turned to Steve and flashed him a smile. Steve held out his hand, palm down, to the ground. The kid reached out and Steve dropped a quarter into the kid’s expectant hands. The kid grinned again, this time with more force behind it. “Thanks, Mister,” he said and scurried off so quick I could see where he disappeared to.

Steve looked around with a bemused grin on his face. He stepped closer to me and whispered, his head not facing me. “Why is it,” he asked softly, the grin clear in his voice. “That you’re always ‘sir’ and I’m always a ‘mister’?” 

***

The office was small, cramped and partially lit, the stationmaster stepped out and gave me some privacy. Reluctantly I closed the gap between the door and the telephone in three strides and slowly reached out and picked it up.

“Hello?” I asked, half expecting no one there, that it was a ruse to get me to come inside. I stiffened at the thought and looked around. I studied the small bank of windows that lined the south wall, but as far as I could tell all off them overlooked a disused hallway, quiet at this time of night. 

“Hey, you there?” The man sounded impatient like they had repeated themselves a few times. I found myself hunched over the phone like I was trying to make myself a smaller target. “Yeah,” I answered, still trying to figure out who the hell it was. I ignored etiquette and cut through the small talk. “What do you want?” I asked gruffly and pretended I didn’t have a thousand sirens screaming at once in my head. 

“It’s Adler-” no it’s not I thought, it’s not his voice. I was about to say so when the caller continued. “We found him but we need someone to identify the body.” 

“Can’t you do it?” I asked, by voice harsher and more impatient than I planned. Unable to stop myself, I asked, “who-how did you know to call me here, anyway?” 

There was a long pause, then “Luca,” quickly followed by a shallow sigh and a quick huff of embarrassment. He cleared his throat which turned into a smoker’s wheeze. I tilted my head away from the handset until the noises died down. 

“If?” I asked, “If you know it’s him then we do you need me?” “Procedure,” he stated gruffly like it was meant to explain everything, and I guess it did. 

“I’m a little busy,” I stated, it like it should be just as obvious to him. The fact that he’d called me at the train station meant that I wasn’t there just to look at the bloody things. 

“Get the next one if you have too.” He said like he read my mind. He gruffed again and lowered his voice. “You know I’m not askin’ you here, right?” 

Defeated, I nodded then realised he couldn’t see it. The fact that he’d dropped Luca’s name meant that this was above and beyond just a casual favour. “Ok, sure. I guess I’ll meet you at the morgue.” 

I was about to hang up when his blustering voice bellowed through the handset and washed into the room. “What?” I asked before I placed it against my ear so he wouldn’t deafen me. I caught the last half of what he said, “-not at the morgue.” 

I cut him off, “pardon?” I asked. “If you are in such a rush, then don’t come to the morgue... I’ll see you at the crime scene.” The copper told me the address of the crime scene, my heart sank as he spoke each number and continued onto the street name. It was the agency. 

I rushed back and told Steve the gist of what the fuzz said without getting too specific, naming names and the like, just in case it was a false alarm. The cab that the detective pulled alongside us. “Take the train and wait for me there.” I begged him. “And I’ll take the next one.” I strained against the desire to kiss him. Instead I handed him my bag, and our hands brushed momentarily on change over. Now that we were so close I could taste it I wanted nothing else. And it was typical Adler, doing his level best to ruin my plans even if it was from beyond the grave. 

***

The cab slowed at the sight of the police, red lights atop their cars barely moved told me they’d been there some time now. Before I could tell the driver to continue on, the my door was pulled open and I was tugged outside into the fresh air by my elbow.

With a firm grip on my arm, the policeman frogmarched me across the street and over to the group of men huddled under a streetlamp. “Am I in some kind of trouble, Officers?” I called out, as friendly as I could despite the way the man tugged me back and forth with each step. 

A man stepped forward, a detective I presumed, by the respect the others showed him. “No need for that now, son,” he admonished the overeager rookie. The rookie dropped my arm like it had turned into a burning iron. I glared him as I grabbed the bottom hem of my shirt and yanked it down and straightened myself up. The detective nodded, pointed and the rookie scuttled away and came back with my hat in his hands. He even brushed off half-heartedly before he handed it back to me. 

At some other sign that I missed, the rest turned and headed towards the cars. At a distance the man deemed far enough from us away, he turned to me. “Sorry about that,” he murmured quietly, he even sounded apologetic. He led me slowly towards the building that housed the agency, his strides wide, but reluctant. 

“I-it’s a-” he cut himself off and didn’t seem to know how to continue. He shook his head and sighed. He opened the door and held it open for me. He rested his head against it for a moment while he studied me. “It’s not pretty up there.” He admitted, then turned away. “After you.” He stated firmly, the first confident thing I’d heard him say. 

***

The detective finally spoke near the top of the stairs, his voice more than ragged from the climb. “We figure it’s related to a case he’s working on,” he paused like he expected me to fill in the gaps, but I kept quiet as my mind raced.

It started at the top of the stairs, the small insidious smell of rot that hit the back of your nose and caused your nostrils to flare. With each step the taint became stronger, more recognisable. 

I walked forwards reluctantly, it felt like I was in a dream, and yet at the same time like this had happened before and I was stuck in another of those flashbacks I’d had about the war. 

Pieces of file-sized newspapers fluttered in the breeze, while the smaller pieces, the money sized pieces slowly spun and tumbled out of the doorway and down the hallway. 

The office was lit brighter than I’d ever seen it before. The flare of the police lamps that stood in the corners, plus some busybody had found some spare bulbs from somewhere and replaced the burnt out ones. The harsh white light bedazzled and fought back the familiar orange haze from the streetlight and the black shadows had vanished for now. 

A quick glance around the office told me that the filing was slapdash more than usual. Drawers of cabinets tugged open or thrown about as someone had rifled through them rummaged quickly and more and more desperately. 

Both Adler’s and my desks had been turned over and dragged to the centre of the room. Visible from the doorway was a long delicate arm draped over the corner of my desk and fingers brushed the floor. A thin trail of blood flowed from the wrist, passed the base of her thumb, crept along the lifeline on her palm and down her index finger to drip on the floor. 

“Hey,” the detective called to get my attention. “Not that one yet.” He waved me over to the other side of the room, what had been Adler’s part of the office. I had been so focused on the dame, that I hadn’t seen anything else. “And you called yourself a soldier,” I admonished myself quietly, “And all it takes is the sight of some blood and a hint of something pretty for your head to get all squiffy.” Pep-talk over with and now sufficiently galled with myself, I strode over and stood next to the detective. 

The anger displayed here scared me Adler’s desk had been kicked to kindling, almost no two pieces touched a third. Dumped unceremoniously in the centre of it all was Adler. His half-open glazed eyes stared over my shoulder at nothing, the rope around his neck had claw marks around it like he had been alive when it had tightened and conscious enough to try and get it off. 

The longer I stared down at him, the less the whole scene made sense. Why would someone go to the trouble to torture a man, ransack his office and destroy his desk, drown him, and then lug his body up those cursed stairs. And done it without leaving so much as a splash of water anywhere? 

Each one of these things by themselves could be considered a warning, but all together? I had no clue. I crouched down closer and stuck my finger in the puddle of water as far from the body as possible. I felt someone watching me, so I glanced up and caught the detective staring at me. I sniffed the moisture, it wasn’t like I was going to lick it, “seawater,” I stated and stood up. 

A blanket of unease settled around me. I knew this was a message even if I didn’t fully understand what it meant. Now I had to worry about whom had the firepower backing them to write it. 

The detective told me on the phone that Luca had given him my number, but did that mean that he was behind it. It felt like it was more Jimmy’s style, but what did he have to hide so badly that Adler needed silencing? And if that was the problem, why her? I turned and studied the arm, the identity of whose still hidden by the angle of the desk. Suddenly I knew, without knowing how I knew, I hadn’t seen more than a glimpse, but I knew that it was Mrs Rogers. I forced air into lungs that seemed to forget how to expand and moved the two steps required to see passed the chunk of the desktop that blocked my view. I was right, it was her as I’d expected. And poor Stevie. How do I tell him? I wondered, while the devil inside me wondered if he already knew. 

Even though my outward appearance may have been calm, my mind raced in a thousand directions. What about all the dirt Alder had dug up over the years, where had it all gone? Where they happy with just general smut we stored in the cabinets or had they been after something more specific and juicer? Adler was too smart to leave that lying around and I couldn’t just up and check his hidey-holes with the fuzz already suspicious. Since the detective had called me at the train station, he knew that I planned on leaving the city, but was he told about Argentina? I thought I had been so careful planning this escape, but the problem with relying on others, there was a high chance of gaping holes that I just didn’t know about. 

The walls of the office closed around me tighter than they had ever been and the ceiling pressed in close. I just wanted to be out of there, I wanted all of them to be out of there. 

***

The whole scene was perplexing. Like that time I’d spent as a kid at the fair with the funhouse mirror, everything was familiar, yet not. The mess of papers normally laying around, but not to this extent, not dumped out of their folders like this and tossed haphazardly about the place. The office with the too bright lights, that somehow made the rooms smaller than the shadows ever could. The display of the rage needed to destroy this place disturbed me, it felt personal, specific. I ran the short list of all the disgruntled clients through my mind, but as far as I knew Alder had sorted that out, or so I’d thought until now. Unless it was a target of his little sting operations, that seemed more like likely, but as far as I knew all that had been old news since I’d made partner. So why now?

Was the ransacked office linked to Alder disappearance and soggy reappearance? Just separate but coincidental occurrence? but then if not, just damned lucky? Was it related to Steve? The drowned corpse of his wife seemed to prove that it was, but how? What was the message that the people responsible want to get across with how they draped the dame’s body coquettishly over the kindling that had been my desk, gorgeous even in death or in spite of it? 

It clearly took forethought and some serious planning to achieve this and more than one person, considering the damage involved. Getting Adler up those stairs was hard enough when he was alive, deadweight it would have been almost impossible for a single fella. But I just couldn’t get the space for my mind to think it through with the city’s finest hovering about. I felt like a bug under a magnifying glass held by a rather nasty and vindictive boy, my every thought, action and word stored and analysed against me. I looked around the room through my lashes, the officers huddled in groups of two to three, dotted around the room, poking their unwanted noses in everything. 

My heavy chest tightened, and I realised that it was more than just the peculiar scene that threatened to crush me. The smell of blood and death combined heavily with the weight of all the people around me. I finally burned through the delayed reaction. The last time I’d been surrounded by so many men in uniform, I had been thigh-deep in blackened water, dead mud and worse. 

My throat clamped up and as the lining of it turned to acid strong enough to make my eyes water. I needed space, but figured making a dash for the door or the fire escape would look bad. 

I headed for the bathroom instead. Without making eye contact with the ass muttered a backhanded comment too quiet to hear, but loud enough to get the gist of, I threw him the stink-eye black enough that I hoped it singed the bastards’ eyebrows clean off. I matched his tone and volume, with a dismissive, “want to hold it too,” thrown over my shoulder as I continued passed him and headed to the bathroom. 

The detective must have given a signal I missed, because once I shut the door I found myself alone for the first time since the telephone call that preceded this shitstorm. 

***

I leant heavily against the basin, my knees barely managed my weight and my arms shook alarmingly as well. My right temple collided with the wall instead of the mirror it aimed itself at, but I had managed to divert it at the last moment. Already dazed, I barely noticed the impact, after a moment, I registered the temperature change from hot skin to cool tile. In spite of the crick in my neck the awkward position caused, it felt nice, so I stayed like that while I concentrated on commanding the concrete slurry in my chest to change back into lungs so I could breathe again.

At the back of my mind pressed the fact that I knew I was on limited time in here before someone was sent to check to see if I’d shimmied down the drainpipe. 

Something unlocked inside me and my eyes fluttered closed as relief flooded over me because I was finally able to suck in a deep breath. I reminded myself that the damn trench was years in the past and I was in the present and Steve waited for me in the future. Steve. The whispered name may have been aloud, I didn’t know, but it was enough to pull me fully back. The image of him surrounded by soft light on the platform where I left him filled my head. He had always been so pretty that the thought of him still made my heart ache, even after all this time. And we’d be together, only if I pulled myself together. 

***

I pressed my left pinkie finger against a certain point on the underneath of the basin at the same time I wrapped my other hand around the handle of the bathroom cabinet door and lifted it upwards as I turned it, just as Adler had shown me. The door opened smoothly without a sound as I stepped out of its way. Under the dim bulb and blocked further by my own shadow, I barely made out the contents within Adler’s true safe. The filing cabinets and the other safe were decoys, flash just to impress the clients compared to this. If the certain spot wasn’t pressed, then the door would open, but the secret compartment would remain attached to the door. Within it was what Alder misleading labelled his petty cash-stash, real green our clients handed over for our services. The page torn from an account ledger contained the only list of clients in existence was still there, folded into haphazard quarters and tucked into a thin bundle of photographs held together with string.

I stared down at it, never more tempted in my life to take it and never more conflicted. Just because it was still there didn’t mean that cops didn’t know about it. Maybe they wanted me to take it so they had justifiable proof and or pin something on me. And even though it was still there and if they didn’t know about it, didn’t mean that I would be able to leave with it. What if I was searched before I was able to leave. If I take the time to stash it on me, there was no way I would be able to do so without some sign showing through my clothing, a glowing beacon and a lodestone around my neck. And if not the cops, what if the person or persons got to Adler and the dame found me, would the consequences be better or worse for me? 

Unable to swallow properly around the lump in my throat, I felt the seconds tick by like the sands of time ground themselves over my charged nerve-endings before splodging their way through the neck of the hourglass. 

The money was tempting, creating a new life had been expensive, my funds and resources pulled a little too tautly for my liking, plus good quality art supplies don’t come cheap...but I knew it would also be the easiest thing to leave behind. 

After I’d saved his life for the second or third time and during a particularly emotional spout of sobriety, Adler had almost set his apartment afire as he burnt a whole bunch of snapshots, the especially dangerous kind from my time before I became Adler’s partner, when I still belonged to Jimmy. 

He’d assured me, that he’d developed them himself and that there’d been no copies and he’d torched the negatives as well to make doubly sure. While this lot could have been taken since then, the bundle was quite thick and I didn’t have the time to go through them all. 

That left the bit of paper. As I stared at it, I realised that that loose leaf page was only dangerous if the wrong people knew that it even existed at all. The odds that it may have been what the killer or killers had been searching for, that Alder had died so bizarrely because of were high, the proof was within spitting distance. But why have snapshots as well unless the paper was useless without context? 

Absently, I kicked the door closed, almost shut but not fully. I turned and slowly went through the motions of relieving my bladder, more of a show if any pervert had a ear pressed to the door than any true need. 

It would be easier to hide, I reasoned, but was it either life insurance or a death sentence, I figured it all depended on whom that list named and shamed. Maybe the pictures matched the ledger. I was running out of time to figure it out. I wanted a clean start, away from all this ugliness, but would I live to regret leaving it behind or bringing it with me more? 

I couldn’t shove it in my shoes, the rain saw to that. The paper would become a soggy mess even before my foot was properly tucked back in my shoe. 

Actually thinking about where to hide it proved to me that I had decided on smuggling it out. I flushed, the pipes clunked in the familiar process as I washed and dried my hands slowly to prolong my visit, my mind dashing in a thousand different directions trying to solve my current conundrum. 

I figured the piece of paper would be safer separated, so I rolled it up to the thickness of a cigarette and placed the tube into my cigarette case. I figured if asked I could always say I was out because it would only pass the most casual of inspections, and that was in this dim light, out there blazed several midday suns, but for the time being, it had to do. My reputation for not sharing cigarettes had helped me in the past, but never to this extent. 

Reflected in the mirror, my eyes came to rest on my hat. So used to wearing it, I forgot it was still on my head. I removed it and spun it over and over in my fingers quickly a few times, with the same flare Steve had taught me. I studied the familiar ridges and valleys of fabric and contemplated the possibilities. I couldn’t tuck it in the band, that was on the outside, and so would be too visible. I flipped it over and inside, the lining shone. The golden silk darkened by Brillcreem and thin in places, the label rubbed wordless through wear. I knew I had my answer. I slid my longest fingernail under the seam of the label and the lining. Luck finally on my side for once, the two pieces created a pocket rather than a patch. 

Before I could come to my senses and talk myself out of just leaving it behind, I hastily snatched the undoubtedly shameful bundle and shoved them under the label, the hard edges broke through the stitches. 

I hitched my trousers up, then crouched down and wiped my fingers blindly over the floor at the back of the cabinet. Hidden by the lowest shelf, but not completely flush with the walls, after several sweeps, I found what I was hoping was there. A lost hatpin, the jewel missing, the metal tarnished, I quickly ran my dirty fingertips under the flow of water, then dried them. Once clean, I forced the tip of the still-sharp pin through the edge of the label and the lining material a few times like was sowing without thread and it was enough to secure the pictures. 

I angled the hat to the light over the sink, but because of the elapsed time in the damp air, the pin didn’t shine and give the game away. My hat felt weird, the new weight unfamiliar however slight, but because the label had preiviously been baggy, the extra thickness the pictures meant they would’t give the game away if I was careful. 

I shut the small door properly and double checked by opening it again, but without the manoeuvring, the hidden compartment stayed hidden. 

***

Whether through politeness or the fact that I actually hadn’t been that long in the bathroom at all, I found myself embarrassingly grateful that no one commented on my previously swift egress. However, after a discrete look around the room, I finally noted that my face wasn’t the only pale one in the room, and my actions were possibly chalked up with my complicated ties to Adler.

The tableau had changed a small amount, the faces shuffled like a deck of cards, but still held the same formation. The detective’s muttered conversation with his colleague died down and he moved towards me, face even more firmly set, body even more stiff and formal than before. 

I turned and nodded once the detective glanced my way. “It’s him,” he seemed unsatisfied and wanted more, so I added, “yes, it’s him, it’s William Adler.” 

The detective nodded curtly and pointed to the dame. “Any idea who she is?” I stared down at her, and how the water from Adler’s body slowly drew the colour from her blood pool. I was about to admit it and name her when I saw a brief look that had flashed across the detective’s face. Something complex and almost predatory, a look that thought it had remained hidden warned me to change my mind. 

I shook my head instead. “No,” I said quietly. I turned fully to him. “Maybe it is...”A wave of sadness hit me, “was a case that Adler’s working on.” I shrugged as if aspirated with the whole thing. “Even though we were partners, it wasn’t like he told me everything.” It was a cop-out that was still technically true. Something died a little inside. “Maybe you’ll find something in the files?” I added in a tone that sounded like I was trying to help. 

The detective glanced around and smiled like he tasted something bitter. “What do you want me to do once we’re finished?” He asked, leant closer to me like he wanted to share a secret. “Want me to torch the place?” He asked so quietly I was unsure if I heard him correctly. If I agreed to cop-assisted arson, I could get into trouble for agreeing to the idea…but if it was a genuine offer, and turned it down, would that work equally as badly. 

I shrugged, as non-committedly I could. “Do what you like?” I replied, as quiet as he did. He could take it as he liked it. I cleared my throat. “Am I done here?” 

The detective nodded and fished out his pocket watch. “Yeah,” he glanced at the time and nodded. “I think so.” He clicked it shut and shoved it back in his pocket quickly. “I’ll see you out,” he said gruffly, loud enough to be for the benefit of others’ ears. “I doubt you’ll get a cab home this time of night.” 

***

Instead of the dark and rain-slickened street, my mind was busy with the images of Adler and the previous Mrs Rogers. How her drenched slip clung to her lithe body, the distant buzz of conversation between two coppers arguing over whether they should cover her body with a sheet for dignity’s sake and respect for the dead, or let the photographer go ahead and show her as is...How the water on her face glinted and shone as the flashbulbs exploded around Adler, and how no one seemed distraught by his passing, which made me even more sick with guilt that all I felt was just...emptiness. Thanks to the war, I was used to death, and in spite of my associations with Jimmy and the seedier side of Adler’s business I’d never had much reason to associate it with civilian life.

It had all happened to much, too fast. Before the dame entered my life and ruined it irrevocably with her demands to kill her husband, I had been lulled into a dull monochromatic half-life created by too much booze and bad company, lit by streetlights and headlights instead of the sun and cigarettes instead of fresh air. I realised with a sinking feeling that I couldn’t figure out when I had become so reliant on the man and the work he offered me because it meant that if I could consume myself with other people’s shit that I wouldn’t have to deal with my own. 

The only wretched sliver hope in my life was Steve, this bright and shining boy from my past. I shoved my cold hands in my pockets and found myself smiling as my strides lengthened. 

But then again I was supposed to kill him. It was my job, but with both Adler and the person who asked me dead, did it mean that I was no longer duty-bound? According to the knot in my stomach that eased and the tension in my shoulders I hadn’t realised was still there eased, my breath freer than it had been since the whole mess started, I hurried down the street towards the train station, towards Steve and where Argentina beckoned like a siren from a fairy-tale. 

***

Instead of almost running, I should have been careful, my footsteps more cautious, my attention instead of the bright lights of the station up ahead, it should have been on the shadows that surrounded the glint of light on metal that would have warned my brain that an automobile lurked within the darkness of the empty lot half a block before the station parking lot.

But I was so focused on the man ahead of me. The little shit had waited for me instead of waiting for me outside the city and me catching the next one like we had planned, but I was too happy to see him to care. He was cast in a halo of light and damp air from the bulb on top of the tall pole of the platform. Light gleamed golden highlights through his mussed blond hair like he'd run his fingers through it countless times. His focus was in the hat in his beautiful hands and twirled nervously through the air. Even though I knew he wouldn’t be able to see me because I was too far away and in shadow, my smile broadened until my face ached and I waved. 

I almost ran now, dignity be damned, I reached up and pulled off my hat and just as I was about to suck in a breath to call his name, he turned and saw me. His face broke into the most glorious smile, full of relief, joy and love. 

I completed three running strides before I saw him change, the smile wavered slightly, his whole body became still. His attention now wasn’t on me, but somewhere over my right shoulder and at that moment, I knew. I just knew. 

No, not now. I don’t know if that was thought, prayer or aloud. I swallowed hard, my senses flared around me, honed from war to sense danger from all around had finally given way, consumed by a moment, a spark of happiness that it turned out I wouldn’t be getting. 

I shifted my head, the movement small, not even given the chance to turn and see who it was before Steve screamed my name. He rushed towards me, hat forgotten, but made it barely a stride before there was a metallic click behind me and something slammed me between the shoulder blades hard enough for me to stumble. There was a moment of burning, by the time my knees collapsed it had changed to numbness. I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get my legs to work and the nothingness of everything told me that this was bad, really bad. By the time my legs started folding and I sunk towards the ground, something else slammed into my back, lower down than the first one and the first shot rang out throughout the night. My chest became heavy and I tasted blood before I coughed and a mouthful spluttered all down my front. 

Completely dazed, I somehow managed to stumble forwards on the weakest my legs had ever been. Steve’s face appeared out of the haze and I felt his arms wrap around me before he tackled me, his weight hastening my journey to the ground. He rolled us both to the side and kept going until we tumbled over the edge of the platform. Iron dug into my side, and I was miffed at him because it hurt and I knew it would leave a bruise. Distantly, like it had happened to someone else, I knew that I’d been shot. That the reason Steve pressed his body to mine like this was that he was doing his best to protect and cover me. 

I coughed, not from a tickle in my throat, but more that my upper body just spasmed, unable to breath from more than just his weight. Blood gushed out from my mouth, and it felt like I vomited everywhere and all over Steve too, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. He wove about like he tried to figure out where the shot came from. 

“...S-Steve?” It took so much effort, and I don’t think he heard me, no matter how close he was, but I needed to say something damn it, and it was drastically important, so I forced a cough to clear my throat, but blood immediately filled it again, but the effort seemed enough, because he turned to me, his jacket and shirt ripped off and in a bundled in a tight mess in his hands. He got me into a sitting position, his movements hurried but firm. His training kicked in, he pulled me away from the platform and slid his body into the space created. He tucked the makeshift bandage in between us hugged me close, automatically putting pressure on the wound. I tried to help, but my legs just wouldn’t work and besides, my hands felt strange now, like I’d slapped a wet bench as hard as I could, but I didn’t remember doing so. 

I felt myself fading, I was in a tunnel and a strange red-blue-yellow followed no matter where I looked or how many times I blinked. 

I remembered that I wanted to say something. It was important that Steve heard it. But the blood wouldn’t leave, and I gagged on the taste. Even though Steve was so close, I couldn’t smell him anymore, just the copper tang of blood. I coughed and gagged again, but for a moment, it seemed to have worked. “St-Steve?” He leant closer and kissed my cheek then pressed his ear to my lips. “I’m,” I whispered, “I’m sorry about your shoes-” damn, that wasn’t it, but I pushed him away before the blood flooded his ear. 

He shook his head, and tears dripped off his chin and onto my face. His body vibrated with his breathless laugh, shaky and wet through tears, because he didn’t understand. He just held me tighter while a coughing fit racked my body. I felt him his body vibrate while he screamed over and over. I made too much noise to hear just what the words were, all I knew that they were loud and desperate. 

My body still and quiet for a moment, gravel crunched and Steve stiffened behind me. It was so dark now that I couldn’t see who it was. They stepped closer as Steve bellowed at them, his whole body tense with the force of it, unable to stop them, pinned by my body to the platform, me, deadweight and unable to save him. All I had was, was...I coughed again and something small and metallic came up. I couldn’t figure it out, until my tongue figured out the shape. It was a bullet. No longer caring where it came from, spat that and a gob full of blood as hard as I could and enjoyed the flinch as it landed square in the face. My breathing became shallower and more rapid, I just couldn’t breathe now, my lungs felt like wet sponges and the air syrup. 

The distinctive two-noted hoot of the approaching steam train whistled through the night as the light swept the station. It back-lit the person in front of us. From the centre of the silhouette, light gleamed off metal and the gun flashed. I didn’t feel anything, instead, behind me, like the anger evaporated from him instantly, Steve slumped, his head slumped down on my shoulder, then rested there and his arms me go. 


End file.
